SPW Cle 
[SUPPRESSED BY THE PREVIOUS QUESTION] 


OF 


MR. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 


OF MASSACHUSETTS, 


ON THE 


REMOVAL OF THE PUBLIC DEP OSITES, 


AND ITS REASONS. 


WASHINGTON: 


PRINTED BY GALES AND SEATON. 


1834, 


SPEECH. 


o 


-3Se- 
INFRODUCTION. 


On presenting to the House of Representatives the resolutions of the Le 
gislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in relation to the state o 
the currency and the removal of the public moneys from the Bank of the 
United States, Mr. J. Q. Apams, to avoid consuming the time of the House, 
and thereby obstructing the reception of other memorials and petitions, con- 
fined himself to a few general and indispensable remarks, expressly stating 
that he hoped, at a suitable time, to be indulged with the opportunity of offer- 
ing to the House his views upon one of the resolutions, in which the Legis- 
lature had declared ¢hezr opinion that the reasons assigned by the Secretary of 
the Treasury for the transfer of the public funds were insufficient to justify 
the measure. It was not until after three unsuccessful attempts, on three 
different days, and after an expostulation with the SPEAKER, as earnest as it 


was necessary, that Mr. Avams was enabled to obtain, in the House of Rep- 
resentatives of the U.S., ahearing for the Legislature of Massachusetts; and 


even then he was indebted for this hearing to the courtesy ofa member from - 
South Carolina, who, on the rourrH pay of a discussion allowed by the 
Speaker, under Ais administration of the rules of the House and of the lex 
parliamentaria, by the judicious admixture of which two authorities all the 
proceedings of the House solve themselves into the will of the Speaker, was 
entitled to the floor, upon certain resolutions of the Legislature of Virginia. 
On Friday, the 4th of April, at the instant when Mr. McDurrir resumed 
his seat, Mr. Apams addressed the Spzaxer, with the intention of delivering 
his opinions upon the question before the House, which was precisely that of 
the resolution of the Legislature of Massachusetts, upon which he had given. 
notice of his desire to be heard. ‘The Speaxer’s eye and ear were in another 
direction, and he gave the floor toa member from Virginia, who, by agree- 
ment concerted out of the House, wasto move the Previous Question. The 
Previous Question was put and carried; and Mr. Apams, deprived thereby 
of his right to address the House, according to the Speaker’s understanding 
of the rules of the House and the lew parliamentaria, is, in discharge of his 
duty to the Legislature of Massachusetts and to his constituents, compelled 
to resort to the press to make public the remarks which it was his intention to 
address to the House. ; ‘ te 


4 
; ig ¥ 
Mr. Speaker: Among the resolutions of the Legislature of the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts which I had, some time since, the honor of intro-_ 
ducing to the House, there is one, declaratory of the opinion of that body, | 


exactly coinciding with the proposition now before the House, namely, that: 


_ the reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury, in his report to 


Congress of the 5d of December last, for the withdrawal and the withholding 
of the public moneys from the Bank of the United States, are not sufficient 
to justify the measure. The amendment proposed by the gentleman from 
Georgia [Mr. Wiipr] adds only that they are not satisfactory—a conclusion, 
from their insufficiency, which this and the other House of Congress are 
alone competent to draw. * 


4 


The time of this House is the property of the people—a property precious 
and costly, which I have no right wantonly or heedlessly to consume. Every 
hour of the time of this House is at least five hundred dollars of the people’s 
money; every minute of it is equivalent to the daily pay of one of its mem- 
bers. It is, therefore, with extreme reluctance that I ever address the House 
at any time, and most especially upon any subject so amply and so ably dis- 
cussed as has been that now under the consideration of the House. 

Yet there are occasions upon which duties of the highest order command 
me to speak. Were I to follow exclusively the dictates of my own judgment, 
perhaps those occasions would be confined to cases in which it might be 
possible for me to aid the deliberations of the House, by presenting to their 
consideration views of the subject before them different from those which 
have been exhibited by other and younger members, with voices of physical 
ability better armed to contend with the Herculean labor of long continued 
audible articulation in this Hall. Those cases are extremely rare. There is 
seldom any thing left to be said upon any topic of public interest which 
passes through the crucible of debate in this House. But it is sometimes 
expected by my constituents that I should declare my opinions here, to the 
send that they may be known to them—a right which I acknowledge as 
‘always belonging to them. 


In the present instance I have the additional motive of complying with’ 


‘the request of the Legislature of my native State, who, in transmitting copies 
-of their resolutions to my colleagues and to me, have desired the exercise of 
“whatever influence we may possess to give them effect, for the obtainment of 
selief to their and.our suffering constituents. 

I feel myself, therefore, under an obligation of irremissible duty to ask the 
‘indulgence of the House for a few remarks upon the question now before 
them. I cannot promise to shed any new light upon the subject; but, if I 
do but repeat that which has been better said before, I will at least endeavor 
‘to avoid any repetition which will not carry its apology in the importance of 
‘the principle to which it will appeal. | 

The reasons, therefore, assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury for 
ordering and directing otherwise than that the public funds should be deposited 
‘in the Bank of the United States and its branches are insufficient and unsat- 
risfactory: ; 

First, because they do not show that his proceedings, in relation to this 
measure, were lawful. 

Secondly, because they do not prove that they were just. . 

It is within the bounds of supposable possibility, (said Mr. Apams,) that a 
measure may be both lawful and just, and yet that the reasons assigned for 
it should be insufficient. In the present case it has, to my mind, been proved 
that the measure itself was neither lawful nor just. It is but too well known 
that, besides the reasons assigned by the Secretary, there were others, which 
he has withheld. What they were, we have in evidence from other sources; 
but they are all equally insufficient to show that the measure was either 
lawful or just. od 

To this point alone I propose to confine my argument. I shall not ques- 
tion the power or the right of the President of the United States to dismiss 
‘a Secretary of the Treasury at his discretion, and, if during the recess of 
the Senate, to appoint another; and, much as I believe that power to have 
‘been abused, the remedy for that abuse is not, in my judgment, an alteration 
either of the constitution or of the law. I shall not, upon this issue, urge 
the recharter of the Bank of the United States, nor even the restoration of 


5 


the deposites. However necessary I may deem those measures to be, the 
discussion of them is not now in its place; nor shall I comment upon either 
of the other resolutions proposed by the Committee of Ways and Means, 
and appended to their report. All these have the appearance of (it may, per- 
haps, not be in order to say that they are) mere evasions of the question 
which the committee should have placed in front of all their other resolutions, 
but which they have cautiously kept out of sight, and which the proposed 
amendment of the gentleman from Georgia has restored to its -righttul place. 

The removal by the Secretary of the Treasury of the deposites from the 
Bank of the United States was unlawful, and his contracts with the State 
banks to receive the deposites were also unlawful. Neither of these mea- 
sures was authorized by the 16th section of the Bank charter. 

The language of the law there is, that the deposites of the public moneys 
shall be made in the Bank of the United States and its branches, unless the 
Secretary of the Treasury shall direct and order otherwise. Otherwise than 
what? Otherwise than that the deposites shall be made there. When the 
deposites have once been made there, his authority, as conferred by this sec- 
tion of the charter, ceases. He has no authority over it whatever, except 
according to the provisions of the constitution and the general laws. When 
the deposite is once made, the provision of the constitution attaches to it, 
which forbids that any money shall be drawn from the Treasury unless in 
consequence of appropriations made by law. All the laws which forbid the 
transfer of moneys appropriated for one object, to be applied to another, like- 
wise attach to it; and the Secretary of the Treasury has no lawful authority 
to draw it from its place of deposite, except for the purpose of making the 
payment to which it is appropriated. 

It is alleged that this section in the charter of the Bank confers upon the 
Secretary of the Treasury no new power. No new power? It was the power 
to dispense with the law. How could he possess it before the law was enacted? 
It was a power to cancel a contract between the nation and the Bank. How 
could he possess it before the contract was made? And as he could not ex- 
ercise it before the statute was enacted, so neither could he exercise it after 
the enactment of the statute, had it not been conferred by the statute itself; 
and he was bound to exercise it according to the provisions and under the 
limitations prescribed by the statute. The limitation of his power was to 
giving order and direction that the deposites should cease to be made in the 
Bank and its branches; and for this he was required to give, as speedily as 
possible, his reasons to Congress. His power was prospective over moneys. 
to be deposited. When once deposited, he could draw them from their 
places of deposite only in consequence of appropriations made by law, and | 
specifically to be applied. . , 

The position that the provision in the gharter. which requires the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury to assign immediately his reasons for ceasing to make | 
the deposites in the Bank of “the United States, confers upon him no new 
power, carries with it this absurdity: it supposes the statute to require of the 
Secretary reasons for ceasing to do that over which it leaves him unlimited 
control when done. According to this version of the law, the Secretary of 
the Treasury might at all times have ordered all the public funds deposited 
in the Bank of the United States and its branches to be removed where and 
how he pleased, without assigning to Congress any reasons for his order what- 
ever. The statute requires his reasons only for ceasing to make the deposites 
in the Bank; if he did possess the power of removing them, the law requires 
of him no assignment of reasons for the removal. 


It is said that the power of removing the public moneys from one place of 


6 


deposite to another has always been exercised by every Secretary of the 
Treasury, and in nowise depends upon the 16th section of the Bank charter. 
Surely no one doubts the power of the Secretary to receive and make re- 
mittances, ‘That power is, indeed, incidental to the obligation of paying out © 
the public moneys according to their respective appropriations; the power of 
making remittances to the places where the payments must be made. That 
is the power which the Secretary of the Treasury has always exercised, with- 
out which the public creditors could not be paid, and for which no law re- 
quires that the Secretary of the Treasury should assign to Congress any rea- 
sons whatever. Lut here, sir, is a removal of public moneys from one place 
to another, for other purposes. It is a colorable transaction for the purpose 
of loaning appropriated public moneys to brittle, favorite banks; and loans have 
been thus made to banks without charge of any interest, while those very 
same banks were loaning to another department of ihe Government moneys 
at an interest of five or six per cent. Sir, no such power ever belonged to 
the Secretary of the Treasury. It was an arbitrary removal of public moneys 
from the place where they had been deposited by law, to a place arbitrarily 
selected by the Secretary, without law and against law. 

The report of the Committee of Ways and Means struggles to sustain the 
lawfulness of the removal of the deposites by the present Secretary of the 
Treasury on the ground of precedent. They have given an interesting his- 
tory of the public Treasury from its first institution, in July, 1775, twelve 
months before the declaration of independence. On reaching this. part of 
their report, it occurred to me that the committee must have imagined it was 
part of their duty to pat down nullification, by proving that the independence 
of our beloved country was the effect and not the cause of our national Union. 
This institution of a commen Treasury, a whole year before that of State sov- 
ereignty, has an aspect quite national, and I recommend it to the meditations 
of my very good and highly respected friends, the nullifters, in this House. 
Sir, Iam scarcely léss anxious to convert them to the true faith on this point, 


- now that it is mere matter of philosophical speculation, than I was when 


their doctrine was as terrific as the murder and assassination letters with which 
we have been recently alarmed. But for my present ‘argument, I will, with’ 
your leave, Mr. Speaker, and that of the committee, come down to the chroni- 
cles of our own times, under the present constitution and laws of the United 
States. 

The Committee of Ways and Means have reported a multitude of drafts 
and orders, issued by almost all the Secretaries of the Treasury, from Alex- 
ander Hamilton to Louis McLane, which they consider as precedents to jus- 
tify the removal of the deposites by Mr. Secretary Taney. I undertake to 
show, that nor one of those drafts and orders affords any justification for the 
act of Mr. Taney, and that the only precedent which has any resemblance to 
his act was expressly pronounced illegal by a committee, of this House, to 
which the investigation of that transaction was committed, and whose report 
was sanctioned by the acceptance of the House itself. ; 

The first of these supposed precedents reported by the committee is a cir- 
cular from Alexander Hamilton to the collectors of the customs, dated Octo- 
ber 14,1789. It is an order to them to remit the moneys collected for duties 
to the Treasurer. of the United States, under a cover to the Secretary of the 
‘Treasury, in what were called post notes of the Bank of North America, at 
Philadelphia, or of the Bank of New York. These notes were to be cut in 
two from top to bottom, and transmitted by two successive mails. This, Mr. 
Speaker, was a mere remittance of the moneys, received by the collectors for 
duties, tothe Treasury. 


{ 


Z 


By the first collection act, passed July 31, 1789, [United States laws, 
vol. 2, p. 16,] the collectors were, by the 5th section of this act, (1) authorized 
to receive all moneys paid for duties, and to take all bonds for securing the 
payment of duties. By the 9th section, (2) p. 18, they were required to ac- 
count in s@ch manner and form as should be directed by the officer appointed 
by law to superintend the revenue of the United States, and to pay over the 
moneys collected by them for duties to the order of the officer authorized to 
direct the same. And, bythe 19th section, (3) p. 23, they were authorized to 
take bonds, payable in’ i, six, and twelve months, for the payment of duties. 
By the 30th section, (4) p. 27, it was enacted that the duties should be col- 
lected in gold and silver coin only. 


The act to establish the Treasury Department was approved on the 2d of 
September, 1789; and, on the 1]th of that month, Alexander Hamilton was 
nominated and appointed as Secretary of the Treasury, and Samuel Mere- 
dith as Treasurer of the United States. The powers and duties of those 
Officers, respectively, were prescribed by that act, page 48. (5) 


; Collection act of 31st July, 1789. 

(1) Src. 5. And be it further enacted, That the duties of the respective officers, to 
‘be appointed by virtue of this act, shall be as follows: It shall be the duty of the col- 
lector to receive all moneys paid for duties, and to take all bonds for securing the payment 
of duties. . 

(2) Szc. 9. And be it further enacted, That the collectors to be appointed, by virtue 
of this act, shall respectively keep true and fair accounts of all their transactions rela- 
tive to their duty as officers of the customs, in such manner and form as may be direct- 
ed by the proper department or officer appointed by law to superintend the revenue of ther 
United States; and shall, at all times, submit their books, papers, and accounts, to 
the inspection of such pers. 1s as may be appointed for that purpose: And the col-° 
lectors of the different ports shall, at all times, pay to the order of the officer who 
shall be authorized to direct the same, the whole of the moneys which they may respect- 
ively receive by virtue of this act. 

(3) Sze. 19. And be it further endeted, That all duties on goods, wares, and mer- 
chandise, imported, shall be paid by the importers before a permit shall be granted for 
landing the same, unless the amount of such duties shall exceed fifty dollars; in which 
case, it shall be at the option of the party making entry to secure the same by bond, 
with one or more sufficient sureties, to be approved of by the collector, and made pay- 
able as followeth, to wit: For the duties upon all-articles of West India produce, 
within four months ; for the duties upon all Madeira wines, within fwelve months; and 
for the duties upon all other goods, within sia months. ' 

(4) Sze. 30. And be it further enacted, That the duties and fees, to be collected by 
virtue of this act, shall be teceived in gold and silver coin only. 


(5) From the act to establish the Treasury Department, 2d September, 1789. 


Src. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and Howse of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That there shali be a Department of Trea- 
sury, in which shall be the following officers, namely : a Secretary of the Treasury, 
‘to be deemed head of the Department; a Comptroller, an Auditor, a Treasurer, a 
Register. , 

Szc. 2, And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty ofjthe Secretary of the: 
Treasury to digest and prepare plans for the improvement and management of the 
revenue, and for the support of public credit ; to prepare and report estimates of the 
public revenue and the public expenditures ; to superintend the collection of the re- 
~venue ; to decide on. the forms of keeping and stating accounts, and making returns; 
and to grant, under the limitations herein established, or to be hereafter provided; all 
warrants for moneys to be issued from the Treasury in pursuance of appropriations 
by law. (See above, the 9th section of the collection law. 4 

Sec. 4. 4nd be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the Treasurer to re- 
ceive and keep the moneys of the United States, and to disburse the same upon warrants 
drawn by the Secretary of the Treasury, countersigned by the Comptroller, recorded by 
the Register, and not otherwise ; he shall take receipts for all moneys paid by him; and 
all receipts, for moneys received by him, shall be endorsed upon warrants signed by 
the Secretary of the Treasury; without which warrant so signed, no acknowledgment 
for money’ received into the public treasury shall be valid. 


= wa o> alll 


8 
The circular from the Treasury Department of October 14, 1789, is preg~- 


nant with instruction to prove the indispensable necessity of a bank for the 
collection and disbursement of the revenue. ‘The law was express that the 
duties should be paid in gold and silver coin only. The shortest*term for 
payment of the bonds taken was four months. The collection act commenced 
operation early in August; the first bonds became payable the first or second 
week in December. The very first payments of duties in specie brought up: 
the serious and embarrassing question how the remittances to the ‘Treasury 
should be made. As early as the 22d September, thg Secretary, eleven days 


only after his appointment, had directed the collectors to receive payment of 


the duties in the notes of the Banks of North America and of New York. 
That letter the Committee of Ways and Means have not thought proper to re- 
port; but, in this letter of the 14th of October, which they have reported, he 
directs them to exchange whatever specie they had received, or might receive,. 
for notes of the same banks, reserving only sums to a small amount to answer 
the drafts which the Treasurer might draw upon them. And, in his letter of 
the 20th of November following, (the second document reported by the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means,) he directs the collectors of Massachusetts to 
receive, in payment of the duties, the notes of the Bank of Boston, as well 
as those of the other two banks before named. By the Bank of Boston he 
meant the Massachusetts Bank, the only one then existing at that place; and 
those three banks were the only ones then existing in the United States. 

In the same letter, of the 20th of November, 1789, Mr, Hamilton gives the 
reason for his direction to the collectors. It was to avail the public of the 
revenues arising in the State, without drawing the specie out of it, by facili-- 
tating the negotiation of drafts. This passage of the letter discloses the over- 
ruling necessity of a bank agency for the remittance of moneys between the 
places of collection and of payment throughout this extensive territory. It is. 
not the inconvenience, and trouble, and hazard of making remittances in the 
precious metals that constitutes its principal difficulty; it is because extracting 
specie from any city where a bank exists diminishes the circulating capital 
of the place to many times the amount extracted. It is well ascertained at 
this time that, speaking in round numbers, for about twenty-five. millions of 
gold and silver existing in the United States, in the vaults of all their banks, 
there are nearly two hundred millions of bank notes and bills. Seven, eight, 
and nine dollars of paper for one dollar of specie are the proportions exhi- 
bited by all the statements of the affairs of banks which have recently been 
published. I do not believe it possible that this distention of the banking blad- 
der can long continue—it must be relaxed, or it will burst. At the time when 
Alexander Hamilton wrote this letter, banking was but in its infancy. There: 
was but one bank in Boston, one in New York, one in Philadelphia. A circu-- 
lation of notes and bills to three times the amount of the specie represented: 
by it, would have been considered at that time fool-hardy gambling. We are: 
now told, even by Mr. Gallatin, that experience has proved that the enormous. 


issues of the present day may be safely made in ordinary times; that is, when. 


they are not brought to the test— 


The spider’s most attenuated thread 
Is cord, is cable, to that tender tie. 


But this letter of Alexander Hamilton discloses the unyielding necessity of — 


a bank for the remittance of public moneys to and from the Treasury. The 
collectors could receive payment of the duties only in gold and silver; but the 
merchant who paid the duties borrowed of the bank the. specie to pay them. 


Then the collector took, instead of the gold and silver, the post notes or bills. 


9 


of the bank, and transmitted them to the Treasurer of the United States, 
at New York, under cover to the Secretary of the Treasury. This was, for 
the purposes of the Treasury, precisely equivalent to gold and silver; and 
the revenues arising in the State of Massachusetts were made available to the 
public without drawing the specie out of it. 
The Bank of North America had been chartered by the old Congress of 
the Confederation, and afterwards by the Legislature of the State of Penn- 
sylvania. It had been extorted from the necessities of the public service, in 
the midst of the revolutionary war, immediately after the universal bank- 
ruptcy of paper money. The instant that became so discredited that no 
one would receive it in payment for any thing, and at any discount—the in- - 
stant there was a return to hard money payments—the want, the overruling 
want, was felt of a bank.—Journals of Congress, vol. 3, pages 470, 624, 
706. (6) It was incorporated by an ordinance of Congress of December 31, 


(6) The following extracts from the journals of the Congress of the confederation, 
exhibit that necessity in the strongest light : 


Journal of Wednesday, June 21, 1780. 
A letter of this day, from the board of war, was read, informing that a number of 
patriotic persons have formed a plan for the establishment of a bank, whose object is the 
public service; that the directors have applied to that board to represent to Con- 
gress the desire of the company that a committee of this body may be appointed to con- 
fer with the inspectors and directors on the subject to-morrow morning : Whereupon, 
Ordered, That a committee of three be appointed for the purpose above mention- 
ed. The members chosen, Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Duane, and Mr. Scott. 


Thursday, June 22, 1780. 

The committee appointed to confer with the inspectors and directors of the propos- 
ed bank brought in a report, which was read. 

The committee also laid before Congress the plan of the bank, communicated to 
them at the said conference; which being read, Congress thereupon came to the fol- 
lowing resolutions : 

Whereas, a number of the patriotic citizens of Pennsylvania have communicated 
to Congress a liberal offer on their own credit, and by their own exertions, to supply 
and transport three millions of rations, and three hundred hogsheads of rum, for the 
use of the army, and have established a bank for the sole purpose of obtaining and — 
transporting the said supplies with greater facility and despatch: And, whereas, on 
the one hand, the associators animated to this laudable exertion by a desire to relieve 
the public necessities mean not to derive from it the least pecuniary advantage ; so, on 
the other, it is just and reasonable that they should be fully reimbursed and indemni- 
fied : Therefore, 

Resolved, unanimously, That Congress entertain a high sense of the liberal offer of 
the said associators, to raise and transport the before-mentioned supplies for the army, 
and do accept the same as a distinguished proof of their patriotism. 

Resolved, That the faith of the United States. be, and the same hereby is, pledged. 
to the subscribers to the said bank, for their effectual reimbursement and indemnity in 
the premises. ® 

Resolved, That the board of treasury be directed to deposite in the said bank, bills 
of exchange in favor of the directors thereof, on the ministers of these United States, 
in Europe, or any of them, and in such sums as shall be thought convenient, but not 
to exceed in the whole £150,000 sterling; that the said bills are to be considered 
not only as a support of the credit of the said bank, but as an indemnity to the sub- 
scribers for all deficiencies of losses and expenses which they may sustain on account of 
their said engagements, and which shall not, within six months from the date thereof, be 
made good to them out of the public treasury ; and, in case of failure, such a propor- 
tion of the said bills as shall be requisite to make good the said deficiency, shall be 
negotiated for that purpose, by the said directors, and the residue thereof returned 
into the treasury. 

Resolved, That upon representation made that the bank stands in need of occasional 
assistance, Congress will advance as much of their current money as can be spared. 
from other services. 


« 


10 


1781; and, in 1789, no sooner was the Government of the United States or- 
ganized under the present constitution, no sooner did they begin to raise a reve- 
nue, than the indispensable necessity was felt of a bank. The revenue was col- 
lected in gold and silver coin only, but it was remitted to the Treasury in bank 
bills, from the necessity of the case. The necessary consequence must have 
been the opening of an account by the Treasury Department with each of 
those banks, which thereby became depositories of public moneys. _ But the 
only object of the Secretary of the Treasury was to effect the remittance of 
the revenues from the places of collection to the Treasury. What analogy 
has this to the act of Mr. Secretary Taney in transferring moneys already in 
the ‘Treasury to other places, and to be used for other purposes than those 
to which they have been appropriated by law? What vested right was im- 
paired? What pecuniary profit was taken from one set of men, and trans- 
ferred to another? taken from a corporation, one-fifth part of whose profits 
belong to the people, our constituents, and given to a corporation, a part of 
whose profits accrue to the Secretary himself? Neither the Committee of 
Ways and Means, nor Mr, Taney, must go to Alexander Hamilton for a pre- 
cedent to justify that. re 

The document marked C, reported by the committee, is a circular to the 
collectors in the State of Georgia, excepting Savannah, dated April 6, 1790, 
and directing them to remit the duties collected by them to the collector of 
that port, John Habersham. There was no bank existing in the United 
States south of Philadelphia. Mr. Habersham was: made the depository of 
all the duties collected in the State of Georgia; but he was not authorized to 


4 

Resolved, That a standing committee of Congress be appointed to confer with the offi- 
cers of the said bank, as occasion ‘may require: the members chosen, Mr. Ellsworth, 
Mr. Duane, and Mr. Scott. 

The next notice of a bank, is of 

‘Saturday, May 26, 1781. } is 

Resolved, That Congress do approve of the plan for establishing a National Bank in 
these United States, submitted to their consideration by Mr. R. Morris, the 17th of 
May, 1781; and that they will promote and support the same, by such ways and means, 
from time fo time, as may appear necessary for the institution, and consistent with the 
public rood. has | 

That the subscribers to the said Bank shall be incorporated agreeably to the princi- 
ples and terms of the plan, under the name of the ‘ President, Directors, and Com- 
pany of the Bank of North America,” so soon as the subscription shall be filled, the 
directors and president chosen, and application for that purpose made to Congress 
by the president and directors elected. : 

ftesolved, That it be recommended to the several States, ‘by proper laws for that pur- , 
pose, to provide that no other bank or bankers shall be established, or permitted with- 
in the said States, respectively, during the war. 

Resolved, That the notes hereafter#to be issued by the said Bank, payable on de-- 
mand, shall be receivable in payment of all taxes, duties, and debts due, or that may 
become due or payable, to the United States. Vi 

Resolved, That Congress will recommend to the several Legislatures. to pass laws, 
making it felony, without benefit of clergy, for any person to counterfeit bank notes, 
or to pass such notes knowing them to be counterfeit ; also making it felony, with- 
out benefit. of clergy, for any president, inspector, director, officer, or servant of 
the Bank to convert any of the property, money, or credit of the said Bank to his 


own use, or in any other way to be guilty of fraud or embezzlement, as an officer or 
servant of the Bank. ‘ 


Saturday, December 29, 1781. 


2 An ordinance for incorporating the subscribers to the National Bank was read a 
rst time. ; 


Ordered, That Monday next be assigned for a second reading. 
Monday, December 31,1781. 


The ordinance was read a second and a third time, and agreed to. 


11 i ‘ 


convert them to his own use. Neither will that precedent serve as a screen 
for the present act. \ 2 : 

The use of the three existing banks, however, was soon found altogether 
inadequate to the purposes of collecting and disbur sing the public revenues.— 
(Resolution, August 9, 1790.) (7) 

In December, 1790, Mr. Hamilton, in answer to this resolution, reported 
to the House of Representativ es a plan of a National Bank; and the act to 
incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States was approved 
by President Washington on the 25th of February, 1791. 

The United States were owners of one-fifth part of the stock of this Bank; 
and from the time of its institution, neither Mr. Hamilton norany one of hissuc- 
cessors ever dreamed of making deposites of the public moneys in any other 
bank than that where the profits of the use of the people’s money would be 
shared by the people. The capital of this Bank was ten millions of dollars; 
and its notes, by the 10th section of the charter, were made receivable in all 
payments to the United Siates, as equivalent to gold and silver. By this 
provision, ‘that of the 30th section of the first collection law, that all the du- 
ties should be paid in gold and silver coin only, was virtually repealed. It 
had, in fact, never been executed. The bills of the three existing banks had, 
by the arrangements of the Treasury, taken its place; and, as they were all 
at all times convertible into gold and silver, they were ‘‘ so like truth, they 


served the turn as well.” 


By the 3d section of an act of Congress of May 10, 1800, (vol. 3, p. 385,) 
the collectors of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Norfolk, and 
Charleston, were directed to deposite, for collection, in the Bank of the 
United States or its branches, ali the bonds taken for duties. The commit- 
tee have also reported a document, marked D, being a létter from Albert 
Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, to Robert Purviance, collector of Bal- 
timore, dated November 16, 1801, announcing the appointment of Thomas 
Tudor Tucker as Treasurer of the United States, in the place of Samuel 
Meredith, resigned. It requests that his ‘deposites in bank may, after the 
30th of Noventber, 1801, be passed to the credit of Mr. Tucker. This was 
a transfer from one Biecasier to another, but not from the Bank of the 
United States to another. tis not germane to the purpose. So long as the 
first Bank of the United States existed, there never was a thought of trans- 
ferring any of the public deposites from it to any other. But, when its char- 
ter expired, a resort to other places of deposite became, of course, indispens- 
ably necessary. 

The document reported by the committee marked E (p. 42) is accordingly 
a letter from Albert Gallatin to the collector of Philadelphia, dated the 25th 
of February, 1811, a very few days before the expiration of the Bank char- 
ter, directing him thenceforward to cease making further deposites in the 
Bank of the United States, and to withdraw bonds already deposited payable 
after the then ensuing 3d of March, and leaving to him the selection of the 
banks in which the custom-house bonds should thereafterwards be deposited. 

Mr. Gallatin himself had foreseen and foretold the evil consequences which 
would ensue from the expiration of the charter of the Bank, and had earnestly 


(7) On the 9th of August, 17 90, immediately before the close of the oor session 
of the first Congress, and when the collection law had been about one year in ope- 
ration, the following order was adopted by the House of Representatives: ' 

Ordered, That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to prepare and report to 
this House, on the second Monday of December next, such further provisions as 
may in his opinion be necessary for establishing the public credit. 


7 j ¢ 
fle 


12 


recommended to Congress its renewal. The terms upon which he prescribes 
it this letter, that the deposites should be transferred to the new depositories, 
afford practical expositions of such inconveniences. He makes it a condition 
that the selected banks, in making their discounts, shall give a preference to 


persons having custom-house bonds to pay; and he prefers that two banks 


should be employed in the same place rather than one. 

Mr. Speaker, | know not who it is that made the arrangement of the doc- 
uments appended to the report of the Committee of Ways and Means; but 
it is a striking exemplification of the condition into which the currency, the 
credit, the revenue, and the finances of this country fell, after the expiration 
of the first Bank of the United States. It is chaos come again. We have 
just been descanting upon document E, page 42. I must request those mem- 
bers of the House whose patience can follow me into this Arabia Deserta, 
this parched wilderness of discussion, to make a lover’s leap over the letters 
of the alphabet from E to P, and from page 42 to page 48 of the report; and 
there, under the letter P, they will find, first, a letter from Louis McLane, 
Secretary of the Treasury, dated 29th October, 1832, short and sweet, but 
having no more right to be there than ‘the nettle had to grow on the monk’s 
grave at Calais, visited by the sentimental traveller, Yorick; for immediately 
after it comes a letter from Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, to 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, dated the 8th of January, 
1812, reporting, in answer to a resolution of the House, a statement of the 
several banks in which the public moneys had been deposited after the expi- 
ration of the charter of the Bank of the United States. To this report sun- 
dry other documents are annexed, and, among the rest, a duplicate of this 
very letter of 25th February, 1811, upon which I have been commenting 
under the letter E. However, this is a small matter. 

Let us see if we can draw order out of this chaos. The report of Mr. 
Gallatin, made within less than a year after the expiration of the charter, 
and the documents annexed to it down to near the bottom of page 56 of the 
appendix to this report of our Committee of Ways and Means, show with a 
pencil of phosphorus the expedients to which the Treasury Department had 
already been driven, for the mere safe-keeping and transmission of the public 
moneys, from the moment when the Bank of the United States had ceased 
to exist. The public moneys had been deposited in twenty-one State and 
District banks; and do you wish to know what has become of some portion 


of these moneys even then thus deposited? Go to the vaults of your Treasury’ 


for the iron chest of your wnavailable funds, and there you will find them. 
Mr. Gallatin had foreseen these consequences. He had urged upon Con- 
gress the recharter of the Bank of the United States; but Congress had de- 
termined it should die, and die it did. His report, eleven months after, in 
January, 1812, presented the case as favorably as he could. But even then 
some of the banks had rejected the indispensable conditions which he had 
prescribed for placing the deposites with them, Those conditions were not 
always acceptable, nor always admissible by the banks. The revenue was 
not so well collected as before, and the Treasury had already been obliged 
to extend, from four to six months, the credits upon which the Banks of Ma- 
rietta and Kentucky had agreed to make payments in one of the Atlantic 

cities. ie 
_ These were but the beginning of sorrows. The consequences of the ex- 
tinction of the first Bank of the United States have recently (about three 
years since) been set forth by that same eminent financier, Albert Gallatin, 


now no longer Secretary of the Treasury, but President of a State bank in 


13 


the city of New York. Among the fictitious charges which a heartless poli- 
tical slander has heaped upon the Bank of the United States, has been that 
of hostility to the State banks of New York. This charge, to which the 
Governor himself of the State has not refrained from giving his countenance, 
is totally disproved and annihilated by the far more enlightened and self- 
authenticating testimony of Mr. Gallatin. Had such hostility existed, and 
been exercised, as that denounced by the Governor of New York, upon mere 
Suspicion, it is impossible but that it should have been known and felt by Mr. 
Gallatin. The institution over which he presides must have been among the 
first to feel and suffer from its effects. It would have been at once his duty 
and his interest to denounce it. Sir, he declares directly the reverse. He 
testifies to the fair and liberal treatment of the State banks by the Bank of 
the United States. He speaks of what he knows. The Governor of New 
York—lI forbear. 

In January, 1831, while the death-blow to borrowed capital was yet rank- 
ling in the bosom, whence it has since been dealt, under the disguise of con- 
stitutional scruples against the power of Congress to incorporate a bank, and 
had not yet matured into a veto message, Mr. Gallatin published an essay 
on the currency and banking system of the United States—a small but valu- 
able treatise on this most important branch of political economy. It has 
been trumpeted abroad, as one of the griévous transgressions of the Bank, 
that some thousand copies of this pamphlet have been gratuitously circulated 
at its expense. Sir, if it had been Aonestly read, in the pure pursuit of truth, 
by the statesmen, whether of the parlor or of the kitchen, who rule this nation, 
many an awful foreboding of ruin, many a bitter cry of distress, many a 
deep and agonizing execration of wretchedness, would have been spared to 
our constituents, and to our own ears. No mah, with a mere human portion 
of malignity, or with any portion short of that of a fiend, could have read 
that pamphlet, and then rushed headlong upon the experiment under which our 
country now writhes in torture—(Read pp. 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 84.) 


Considerations on the Currency, by Albert Gallatin, page 42. 


The capital of the State banks existing in the year 1790 amounted to about 
2,000,000 of dollars. The former Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791, 
with a capital of $10,000,000. The charter was not renewed ; but in January, 1811, 
immediately before its expiration, there were in the United States eighty-eight State 
banks, with a capital of 42,610,000 dollars, making then, together with that of the 
National Bank, a banking capital of near 53,000,000.. In June, 1812, war was declared 
against England; and in August and September, 1814, all the banks south and west 
of New England suspended their specie payments. 


Considerations on the Currency, page 44. 

The creation of new State banks, in order to fill the chasm, was a natural conse- 
quence of the dissolution ofthe Bank of the United States ; and, as is usual under 
such circumstances, the expectation of great profits gave birth to a much greater num- 
_ ber than was wanted. They were extended through the interior parts of the country, 
created no new capital, and withdrew that which might have been otherwise lent to 
Government, oras profitably employed. From the 1st of January, 1811, to the 1st of 
January, 1815, not less than one hundred and twenty new banks were chartered, 
and went into operation, with a capital of about forty, and making an addition of near 
thirty millions of dollars to the banking capital of the country. 


Considerations on Banking and Currency, page 45. ; 
The increase of issues from forty-five and a half to sixty-eight millions, or of about 
fifty per cent., within the first fifteen months of the suspension of specie payments, was 
the natural consequence of that event. : E 


Considerations on Banking and Currency, page 46. 
We have stated all theimmediate and remote causes within our knowledge, which 
occurred in producing that event ; and, although the effects ofa longer continuance 


< 


14 

of the war cannot be conjectured, it is our deliberate opinion that the suspension 
might have been prevented at the time when it took place, had the former Bank of 
‘the United States been still in existence. The exaggerated increase of State banks, oc- 
casioned by the dissolution of that institution, would not have occurred. That Bank 
would, as before, have restrained within proper bounds and checked their issues ; 
and, through the means of its offices, it would have been in possession of the earliest 
symptoms of the approaching danger. It would have put the Treasury Department 
onits guard ; both acting in concert, would certainly have been able at least to retard 
the event. And as the treaty of peace was ratified within less than six months af- 
ter the suspension took place, that catastrophe would have been altogether avoided. 

We have already adverted to the unequivocal symptoms of renewed confidence 
shown by the rising value of bank notes which followed the peace. This would have 
greatly facilitated an immediate resumption of specie payments, always more easy, 
and attended with far less evils, when the suspension has been of short duration. 
The banks did not respond to that appeal made by public opinion; nor is there any 
evidence of any preparations or disposition on their part to pay their notes in specie, 
until after the act to incorporate the new Bank of the United States had passed. We 
are inclined to ascribe this principally to the great difficulty of bringing the various 
banks in our several commercial cities tu that concert which was indispensable. But it 
cannot be concealed, that, in sucha situation, the immediate and apparent interest of 
the banks is in opposition to that of the public. It is well known that the Bank of 
England, though apparently disposed at first to resume its specie payments, found a 
continued suspension extremely convenient and profitable ; that, during that period of 
twenty years, itsextraordinary profits, besides raising the usual dividend from seyen to 
ten per cent., amounted to thirteen millions of pounds sterling, and that it accordingly 
threw obstacles in the way of the resumption. The State banks of the United States 
were only inactive in that respect, and did not impede that desirable event ; but they 
used the advantages incident to the situation in which they were placed; and to what 
extent their issues were generally increased has already been shown. 


Considerations on Banking and Currency, page 47. 

It will be found, by reference to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, of De- 
cember, 1815, that his recommegdation to establish a National Bank was, in express. 
terms, called ‘a proposition relating to the national circulating medium,” and was 
exclusively founded on the necessity of restoring specie payments and the national 
currency. He states it-as a fact incontestably proved, that the State banks could not, 
at that time, be successfully employed to furnish a uniform national currency. He 
mentions the failure of one attempt to associate them with that view ; that another at- 
tempt, by their agency in circulating Treasury notes, to overcome the inequalities of 
the exchange, has only been partially successful ; that a plan recently proposed, with 
the design to curtail the issues of bank notes, to fix the public confidence in the admi- 
nistration of the affairs of the banks, and to give to each bank a legitimate share in the 
circulation, is not likely to receive the general sanction of the banks ; and that a recur- 
rence to the national authority is indispensable for the restoration of a national curren- 
cy. Such was the cotemporaneous and deliberate opinion of the officer of the Gov- 
ernment, who had to struggle against the difficulties of a paper currency, not only de- 
preciated, but varyingin value from day to day, and from place to place. 

It was not till after the organization of the Bank of the United States, in the latter 
part of January, 1817, that delegates from the banks of New York, Philadelphia, 
Baltimore, and Virginia, assembled in Philadelphia, forthe purpose of agreeing to 
a general and simultaneous resumption of specie payments. A compact, proposed 
by the Bank of the United States, acceded to by the State banks, and ratified by the Se- 
cretary of the Treasury, was the result of that convention. The State banks engaged 
to commence and continue specie payments, on. various conditions, relative to the trans- 
fer and payment of the public balances on their books, to the Bank of the United 
States, and to the sum which it engaged previously to discount for individuals, or, 
under certain contingencies, for the said banks; and also with the express stipulation, 
that the Bank of the United States, upon any emergency which might menace the 
credit ofany of the said banks, would contribute its resources to any reasonable extent 
in support thereof, confiding in the justice and discretion of the banks, respectively, to 
circumscribe their affairs within the just limits indicated by their respective Batak as 
soon as the interest and convenience of the community would admit. To that com- 
pact, which was carried into complete effect, and to the importation of more than seven 
millions of dollars in specie from abroad, by the Bank of the United States, the com- 
munity is indebted for the universal restoration of specie payments, and for their hay- 


Var 


ing been sustained, during the period of great difficulty, and of unexampled exporta- 
tion of specie to China, which immediately ensued. 

Among the difficulties which the Bank had ‘to encounter, must be reckoned the ef- 
fort made to alleviate the distress which always attends the return from a depreciated 
to a sound’currency. i 


Considerations on Banks and Currency, page 50. 


The distress that took place, therefore, at that time, (1819,) may be clearly traced 
to the excessive number of State banks incorporated subsequently to the dissolution of 
the first Bank of the United States, and to their improvident issues. Those of the coun- 
try banks of Pennsylvania alone amounted, in November, 1816, to 4,756,460 dollars, and 
had been reduced in November, 1819, to 1,313,976 dollars. A committee of the Sen- 


-ate of that State, appointed in December, 1819, to inquire into the extent and causes 


of the present general distress, ascribe it, as we do, to the improvident creation of so 
many banks, as will appear from the following extract from their report: 

‘e At the following session, the subject was renewed with increased ardor; anda 
bill, authorizing the incorporation of forty-one banking institutions, with capitals 
amounting to upwards of seventeen millions of dollars, was passed by a large ma- 
jority. This bill was also returned by the Governor with additional objections ; but 
two-thirds of both Houses (many members of which were pledged to their constituents 
to that effect,) agreeing on its passage, it became a law onthe 2!st March, 1814; 
and thus was inflicted on the Commonwealth an evil of amore disastrous nature than 
has ever been experienced by its citizens.. Under this law thirty-seven banks, four of which 
were established in Philadelphia, actually went into operation.” 


Considerations on Banking and Currency, page 50. 


We have an account of 165 banks that failed between the Ist of Jahuary, 1811, and 
the Ist of July, 1830. The capital of 129 of these amounted to more than twenty-. 
four millions of dollars, stated to haye been paidin. The whole amount may be esti- 
mated at near thirty millions, and our list may not be complete. The capital of the 
State banks, now existing, amounts to about 110 millions. On a total capital of one hun- 
dred and forty millions, failures have amounted to thirty, or to more than one-fifth of 
the whole. 


Considerations on Banks and Currency, page 84. 


The manner in which the Bank checks the issues of the State banks is equally 
simple and obyious. It consists in receiving the notes of all those which are solvent, 
and requiring payment from time to time, without suffering the balance due by any to 
become too large. Those notes on hand, taking the average of the three and a half 
last years, amount always to about a million and a half of dollars ; and the balances due 
by the banks in account current, (deducting balances due to some,) to about nine 
hundred thousand. We think that we may say, that, on this operation, which re- 
quires particular attention and vigilance, and must be carried on with great firmness 
and due forbearance, depends, almost exclusively, the stability of the currency of the 
country. ; 


Mr. Speaker, we have found nothing in the documents bearing the signa- 
ture of Albert Gallatin, reported in the appendix to the report of the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, to warrant the removal of the deposites by Mr. 
Taney. Let us now go back to page 43, letter F, where will be founda 
letter dated December 14, 1815, signed A. J. Dallas, Secretary of the Trea- 
sury, to the Treasurer. It is a mere order to him to make a remittance to 
the cashier of the Manhattan Company, at New York, of three hundred 
thousand dollars. The precautions, both of concealment and of: disguise, re- 


- commended in this letter, add to the mass of evidence heaped upon heap on 


all the rest, to prove the want of a National Bank. In making this remittance, 
Mr. Dallas dreads the chances of loss by the robbery of the mail. He. 
recommends to the Treasurer to address the notes to the cashier of the bank, 
under cover to the collector, to have them franked by the Register of the 
Treasury, to give them the appearance of ordinary marine papers, and to 


Dae shy 


16 


take care to avoid publicity. But here again is a mere remittance of money; 
no right of any one impaired; no wrong done to any one; no resemblance 
whatever to the transfer draft of Mr. Secretary Taney to the same Manhat- 
tan Company, to sustain their credit; that is to say, to pay their debts. 

We now come, Mr. Speaker, to the transactions of Mr. Crawford with the 
deposite banks of his time; and to understand the bearing of the documents 
under his signature, reported by the committee, it will be necessary to take 
a view of the circumstances under which they were written. 

Turn the page to letter G, from W. H. Crawford, dated 29th December, 
1819, to the Treasurer, directing him to deposite in the United States Branch 
Bank, in this city, a draft, in favor of its cashier, for $16,000, upon the 
Bank of Washington. Whether the committee consider this as a precedent 
for removing deposites from the branch bank, I know not. It has to me the 
aspect of a restoration of deposites, and, as such, is a precedent very fit to 
- be followed. ‘ ; 

Then succeed five letters, signed Richard Rush, lettered from H to M, and 
dated from 16th August, 1825, to 23d December, 1828, all relating to depo- 
sites in banks where there was no branch of the United States Bank, and 
where, of course, his power to make deposites was discretionary. There- 
are, subsequently, two letters (marked N and QO) from Samuel D. Ingham, 
dated in 1839, of the same character; and then, lastly, follows the afore- 
mentioned letter P, from Louis McLane to the Treasurer, ordering a trans- 
fer from one District bank in Alexandria to another. 

Well, sir, this volume of documents, from A to P, proves, beyond all con- 
testation, what I believe never was contested—namely, the power of the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury to cause remittances of the public moneys to be made 
from the places where they have been collected to the Treasury, and from 
the Treasury to the places where they are to be paid away, according to ap- 
propriations made by law. They prove nothing more; above all, they fur- 
nish not a scintillation of proof of the right of the Secretary of the Treasury ° 
to convert the public moneys to his own use. This is what Mr. Taney has 
done, by transferring them from places of deposite where the use of them was 
of pecuniary profit to the people, to others; in one of which, at least, it was 
of pecuniary profit to himself. Nothing like it is traceable in any one of the 
documents reported by the Committee of Ways and Means. 

The committee have reported, however, another set of documents; being 
a selection of reports and letters relating to the transactions of Mr. Crawford | 
with the banks while he was Secretary of the Treasury. In these papers, 
much controverted matter is reproduced of times gone by, and collisions, I 
trust, never to return. But to estimate the bearing of any thing contained in 
these upon questions now before us, we must advert to the circumstances 
under which those transactions occurred, and to the special powers vested in 
the Secretary of the Treasury, while Mr. Craavford was in that office, but 
never transferred to his successor. Hh 

We have seen the consequences to the credit and revenue which immedi- 
ately followed the extinction of the Bank of the United States—the multi- 
plication of State banks; the cataracts of bank paper; the suspension of 
specie payments; the dislocation of every joint of credit, public and private. 
In January, 1814, less than three years after the expiration of the Bank char- 
ter, the necessity of a National Bank had already forced itself upon the judg- 
ment of majorities in both Houses of Congress; and on the 14th of October, 
41814, Alexander James Dallas; then just appointed Secretary of the Trea- 


17 


-sury, wrote thus, in answer to inquiries from the Committee of Ways and 
Means of the House of Representatives. [Bank documents, p. 48].] (8) 
After long and reiterated debates, a bill to establish a new Bank of the 
United States passed both Houses of Congress, which, on the’80th of Jan- 
uary, 1815, was negatived by President Madison. But at the next ensuing 
session of Congress, the increasing gravitation of political necessity broke 
-down all opposition. This was then the language of the Secretary of the Trea- 
Sury, in hisannual report on the finances. [Bank documents, p. 612] (9) 
A bill for a National Bank was again introduced, received the sanction of 


(8) Extract of the reply of the Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the Com- 
; mittee of Ways and Means, dated 14th October, 1814. 

The establishment of a National Institution, operating upon credit, combined with 
capital, and regulated by prudence and good faith, is, after all, the only efficient re- 
medy for the disordered condition of our circulating medium. While accomplishing 
‘that object, too, there willbe found, under the auspices of such an institution, a safe 
depository for the public treasure, and a constant auxiliary to the public credit. 
But, whether the issues of a paper currency proceed from the National Treasury, or 
from a National Bank, the acceptance of the paper in a course of payments and re- 
ceipts, must be forever optional with the citizens. The extremity of that day cannot 
be anticipated, when any honest and .enlightened statesman will again venture upon 
the desperate expedient of a tender law. 

It is proposed that a National Bank shall be incorporated for a term of twenty 
-years, to be established at Philadelphia, with a power to erect offices of discount 
and deposite elsewhere. [Legislative and Documentary History of the United States 
Bank, page 481.) 


49) Extract from the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, on the state of the finances, 
December 6, 1815. 


Of the services rendered to the Government by some of the State banks, during the 
late war, and of the liberality by which some of them are actuated in their intercourse 
with the Treasury, justice requires an explicit acknowledgment. Itisa fact, however, 
incontestably proved, that those institutions cannot, at this time, be successfully employ- 
ed to furnish a uniform national currency. The failure of one attempt to associate 
them with that view has already been stated. Another attempt, by their agency, in 
-circulating Treasury notes, to overcome the inequalities of the exchange, has been only 
partially successful. Anda plan recently proposed, with the design to curtail the is- 
sues of bank notes, to fix the public confidence in the administration of the affairs of 
the banks, and to give to each bank a legitimate share in the circulation, is not likely 
to receive the general sanction of the banks. The truth is, that the charter restric- 
tions of some of the banks, the mutual relation aud dependence of the banks of the 
same State, and even of the banks of the different States, and the duty which the di- 
rectors of each bank conceive they owe to their immediate constituents, upon points of 
-security or emolument, interpose an insuperable obstacle to any voluntary arrange- 
ment, upon national considerations alone, for the establishment of a national medium, 
through the agency of the State banks. It is, nevertheless, with the State banks that 
‘the measures for restoring the national currency of gold and silver must originate; for, 
until their issues of paper be reduced, their specie capitals be reinstated, and their 
specie operations be commenced, there will be neither room, nor employment, nor 
vsafety, for the introduction of the precious metals. The policy and the interest of the 
State bank must, therefore, be engaged in the great fiscal work, by all the means 
which the Treasury can employ, or the legislative wisdom shall provide. 

The establishment of a National Bank is regarded as the best, and perhaps the only 

-adequate resource, to relieve the country and the Government from the present em- 
barrassments; authorized to issue notes, which will be received in all payments to the 
United States, the circulation of its issues will be co-extensive with the Union; and 
there will exist a constant demand, bearing a just proportion to the annual amount of the 
duties and taxes to be collected, independent of the general circulation for commercial 
and social purposes. A National Bank will, therefore, possess means and the opportuni- 
ty of supplying a circulating medium, of equal use and value in every State, and in 
-every district of every State. [Legislative and Documentary History of the Bank of the 
United States, page 612.] dk 
2 


18 


both Houses, and, on the 10th April, 1816, the approving sign-manual of James. 
Madison. That bill is the charter of the present Bank of the United States... 

At the time of the enactment of this law, all the revenues of the Union 
south of New England consisted of Treasury notes, and deposites in banks. 
whose payments in specie were suspended. To compel the resumption of 
specie payments was one of the primary objects for which the Bank was 
instituted; and immediately afterwards, on the 30th of April, 1816, the fol- 
Jowing joint resolution was adopted and approved by the President. [U. S. 
laws, vol. 6, p. 163.] (10) 

Armed with the extraordinary power conferred by this resolution, Mr. Dal- 
las, before it was possible to accomplish any part of its purposes, retired from 
office. Mr. Crawford was his successor, and entered upon the discharge of 
the duties of Secretary of the Treasury on the 22d of October, 1816. The 
circular of the 28th of January, 1817, (appendix to the report of the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, p. 56,) is a notification to all the deposite banks 
in the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, that the Treasurer 
had been instructed to transfer the public moneys deposited with them to the 
Bank of the United States, which, with the new year, had first commenced 
operations. 

It appears by Mr. Crawford’s letter of 10th December, 1817, to the 
Speaker of the House of Representatives, (p. 63,) assigning his reasons for 
not transferring the deposites from some of the State and District banks to the 
Bank of the United States, that he entertained doubts whether the provisions 
of the 16th section of the bank charter did impose the obligation of transfer- 
ing to the Bank of the United States the deposites previously made in the 
local banks. He did, nevertheless, communicate his reasons for ordering and 
directing otherwise than that the deposites should be made in the Bank of 
the United States, whether they had been previously deposited in the local 
banks or not. A single moment of reflection will show that the transfer of 
deposites from local banks, nét paying specie, to the Bank of the United 
States, which could pay in nothing but specie, must have been made under: 
this resolution of Congress of 30th April, 1816, and upon principles altogether 
inapplicable to the present case. The object of the Secretary of the Trea— 
sury was, by one and the same operation, to compel the local banks to resume 
specie payments, and to withdraw from them the public deposites, to place them 
in the Bank of the United States. That Bank could receive them only as. 
equivalent to specie, for so only was it bound by its charter to pay them outs. 
It was impossible, then, effectively to withdraw them, but by a simultaneous 


resumption of specie payments by the banks from which they were to be- 
withdrawn. 


(10) .2 resolution relative to the more effectual collection of the publie revenue. 


Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, 
tn Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and, he hereby is, re- 
quired and directed to adopt such measures as he may deem necessary, to cause, as: 
soon as may be, all duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, accruing, or becoming pay- 
able to the United States, to be collected and paid in the legal currency of the United 
States, or Treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the United States, as by law pro- 
vided and declared; or in notes of banks which are payable and paid on demand, in the 
said legal currency of the United States; and that, from and after the 20th day of Feb- 
ruary next, no such duties, taxes, debts, or sums of money, accruing or becoming pay 
able to the United States as aforesaid, ought to be collected or received otherwise than 
in the legal currency of the United States, or Treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of 
of the United States, or in notes of banks which are payable and paid on demand’ in 
the said legal currency of the United States. (Approved 30th April, 1816.) — 7 


19 


To obtain their assent to this twofold measure, then, Mr. Crawford felt him 
self justified in giving them assurances of all the aid from Government ne- 
cessary for its accomplishment; and particularly that in effecting the transfer 
of the deposites from their vaults to those of the Bank of the United States, 
there should be no advantage taken of them by any unnecessary pressure which 
should render the operation injurious to them. There can be no doubt that 
he was fully justified in giving them these assurances. ‘To the liberality with 
which the Bank of the United States co-operated to the accomplishment of 
these purposes, the letter of Mr. Crawford, of 10th December, 1817, bears 
signal testimony. [Rep. p. 66. | 

It is equally certain that indulgences were afterwards extended to several 
of the local banks, beyond what was warranted by law. They furnished the 
grounds of investigations and inquiries by both Houses of Congress, and, at 
one time, of direct charges made by Ninian Edwards against Mr. Crawford. 
The letters of that officer of the 25th of February, 1823, (p. 66,) to the Se- 
nate, of the 24th of February, 1823, (p. 72,) to the chairman of a committee 
of the House of Representatives, and of the 8th May, 1824, (p. '76,) to the 
chairman of a committee of the House, appointed to investigate the charges 
of Ninian Edwards, exhibit statements of several instances in which he had 
caused deposites to be transferred to the local banks for the purpose of sustain~. 
ing them. In justification of the practice, he alleges frequent instances in, 
which it had been resorted to during the interval between the first and second 
Banks of the United States; and he cites, as analogous cases, several instances. 
of delays to the payment of custom-house bonds, during the existence of the- 
first Bank of the United States. But so far as such proceedings ever had. 
taken place as expedients to rescue banks from danger, the committee of the- 
House of Representatives, upon the charges of Ninian Edwards, expressly 
declare that this is no legal employment of public funds; it is nothing but a. 
gratuitous loan. (p. 83.) Such was, the decision of a committee, the general: 
tenor of whose report was highly favorable to Mr. Crawford. It may now 
be added, that it is precisely of such gratuitous loans that the million and a; 
half of unavailable funds in your Treasury are composed. None such had! 
ever been made since that report, until the present Secretary of the Treasury 
revived the practice; and it is not one of the least astonishing incidents of our: 
present times, that a Committee of Ways and Means of this House have ad- 
duced, in support of the legality of Mr. T'aney’s transfers to sustain his select~ 
ed banks, that very report of Governor Floyd which declares all such gratui- 
tous loans illegal. 

Mr. Speaker, I have now gone through the whole series of documents an- 
nexed to the report of the Committee of Ways and Means, as precedents to 
justify the present Secretary of the Treasury in the transfer of public moneys 
from their places of deposite, presembed by cine to local banks, for the pure 
pose of sustaining their credit. ¢ 

I trust I have shown that not one of sedis documents will bear out the 
Secretary in the measure upon which we are now to decide; and that the only 
precedents having any analogy to his act, are, and have been, by this House, 
authoritatively pronounced illegal. 

[ pass over the extract from the Jetter of Samuel D. Ingham, of 5th Octo~« 
ber, 1829, reported by the committee, (p. 84.) It is a mere brutum fulmen, 
indicative quite as much of the temper as of the intellect of its author, 
Even if it could countenance by example the vindictive rancor of the re- 
moval, it furnishes not a color of justification for the transfer drafts. It 
may, indeed, be considered as evidence how long this project of threatening 


ve 


ft 


20 


and of bullying the Bank, to break it down into a political engine, was fos- 
tered in the soul, before it was exchanged for constitutional scruples of con- 
science against the Bank itself. 

Thus, then, Mr. Speaker, I have proved, to the very rigor of mathematical 
demonstration, that the Committee of Ways and Means, to bolster up the 
lawless act of the Secretary of the Treasury, in transferring public moneys 
from their lawful places of deposite, to others, in one of which, at least, he 
had an interest of private profit to himself, have ransacked all the records 
of the Treasury from its first institution in 1775, to this day, in vain. From 
the whole mass of vouchers to authenticate the lawful disposal of the public 
moneys which that department can furnish, the committee have gathered 
fifty pages of documents, which they would pass off as precedents for this 
flagrant violation of the laws; and not one of them will answer their purpose. 
One of them alone bears a partial resemblance to the act of the present Sec- 
retary, and that one the very document adduced by the committee themselves 
pronounces and proves to be unlawful. 

By the 8th section of the act to establish the Treasury Department, it is 
provided, ‘‘ that no person appointed to any office instituted by this act shall, 
directly or indirectly, be concerned or interested in carrying on the business 
of trade or commerce, or be owner, in whole or in part, of any sea vessel, 
or purchase by himself, or another in trust for him, any public lands or other 
public property, or be concerned in the purchase or disposal of any public 
securities of any State, or of the United States, or take or apply to his own 
wse any emolument or gain for negotiating or transacting any business in the 
said department other than what shall be allowed by law.” 

The office of Secretary of the Treasury is one of those instituted by that 
act. And itis a circumstance deserving of deep consideration, that this De- 
partment of the Treasury is the only one established at the organization of 
this Government, the officers of which are laid under this interdiction. The 
Secretaries of State, of War, and of the Navy, may be merchants, owners 
of ships, and dealers in public securities, without violation of the law. Even 
the clerks in the Treasury Department, to whom, by an act of the 3d of 
March, 1791, this same prohibition had been extended, were afterwards, by 
the 12th section of an act, 8th May, 1792, released from it, excepting ‘‘ so far 
as respects the funds or debts of the United States, or of any State, or in 


any kind of public property.” To that extent every clerk in the Department . 


of the Treasury is to this day restrained from being concerned in trade, com- 
merce, or brokerage. The restraint upon the Secretary himself, the head of 
the department, remains in force to this day. I believe both the spirit and 
the letter of this law to have been violated by the present Secretary of the 
Treasury, when he transferred the public funds from the Bank of the United 
States to the Union Bank of Baltimore, he himself being a stockholder 
therein. And so thorough is my conviction of this principle, and so corrupt- 
ing and pernicious do I deem the example which he has thereby set to future 
‘Committees of Ways and Means to cite as precedents for yet ranker rotten- 
ness, that if there were a prospect of his remaining in office longer than till 
the close of the present session of the Senate, I should deem it an indispen- 
sable, albeit a painful duty of my station, to take the sense of this House 
upon the question. And, sir, if after. this explicit declaration by me, the 


Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means has not yet slaked his thirst . 


for precedents, he may gratify it by offering a fifth resolution, in addition to 


the four reported by the committee, as thus: RN 


7 


Ne 


21 


** Resolved, That the thanks of this House be given to Roger B. Taney, 
Secretary of the Treasury, for his pure and pIsINTERESTED patriotism in 
transferring the use of the public funds from the Bank of the United States, 
where they were profitable to the people, to the Union Bank of Baltimore, 
where they were profitable to himself.” 

- The reasons of the Secretary of the Treasury, then, for abstracting the 
public moneys from the places where they had been deposited by law, are 
not sufficient to justify the measure, because the measure itself transcended 
his lawful authority. 

And the purpose itself for which these re and lawless transfers 
were made was utterly unwarrantable. It exhibits a Secretary of the Treasu- 
ry tampering with the public moneys to sustain the staggering credit of his 
selected depositories. The transfers were made to supply those worthless fa- 
vorites withthe means of meeting engagements which they could not have 
met with their own resources. The very measure itself stamps with insolvency 
the depositories so judiciously chosen as substitutes for the Bank of the Uni- 
ted States. The Secretary of the Treasury withdraws the public treasure 
from its place of safe keeping provided by law, scatters. it abroad, distributes 
it among swarms of rapacious political partisans, and the firstearnest of its 
safety is, their resort to hum for millions of appropriated public moneys to pay 
their debts and save them from breaking. 

But although the 16th section of the Bank charter did not authorize the 
Secretary of the Treasury to remove from the Bank of the United States 
and its branches the public moneys already committed to their custody, 
it did authorize him to direct and order’ that they should cease to be so de- 
posited for the future, and required of him to assign, as soon as possible, to 
Congress his reasons therefor.’ 

Are the reasons which he has so assigned sufficient to justify that part of 
the transaction which was within his lawful competency—the order and di- 
rection that the Bank of the United States should cease to be the depository 
of the publicrevenues? I think not. 

[t is very remarkable that the reasons are of two kinds; if not altogether 
incompatible with each other, yet so totally different in their characters, that 
either of them, if of any consideration whatever, would render the other un- 
necessary and useless. The first is the mere approximation of the time 
when the charter of the Bank is to expire. The second is gross and corrupt 
misconduct in the president and a part of the directors of the Bank. Now, 
if the approach of the time when the charter of the Bank was to expire fur- 
nished any reason whatever for seeking other depositories of the public 
moneys, it would have been an office as useless and unnecessary, as it is 
odious and discreditable, to accuse men of fair and honorable characters of 
dishonesty and corruption, as a pretext for depriving them of their rights. 
If, on the other hand, the Secretary of the Treasury could have proved upon 
the president and directors of the Bank that misconduct which he is so 
ready to impute to them, he would have been under no necessity to assign 
the other reason, the approach of the termination of the charter. The very 
assignment of these two classes of reaSons proves the total want of confi- 
dence of him who assigns them in the validity of either. Each of them 
is substantially the refutation of the other. ; 

Sir, that the first reason of the Secretary—the approximation of the time 
when the charter of the Bank will expire—is not sufficient to justify the 
change of the depository, has been proved by the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania, who first addressed the House on this subject, with such force of de- 


& 


“——_ 


monstration, that not an attempt even has been made to reply to him. No 
rational reply can be made to it. ‘I will not gildrefined gold.” There is 
only one consideration upon which I shall permit myself to add one word to 
his argument on this head. It is a consideration of public faith; it is the 
word of honor of the nation. Mr. Speaker, I address myself to every in- 
dividual member of this House. I say to him, is not your word of honor 
dearer to you than your life? and are you not here the guardian of. the word 
of honor of your country? Is the word. of honor of your country less dear 
to you than your own? I speak to silent voices, but I know that the heart 
of every man who hears me answers—no. Then, I say, that the public faith, 
the word of honor of the nation, is pledged to the corporation, the president, 
directors, and company of the Bank of the United States; that unless for 
good and sufficient reasons it should be otherwise ordered, the deposites of 
the public moneys shall be made in the Bank and its branches during the 
continuance of the act of incorporation. 'To withdraw the deposites, there- 
fore, before the expiration of the charter, merely because that term is draw- 
ing near, isa violation of the plighted public faith; a forfeiture of the word 
of honor of the nation. ‘That reason is prohibited by the very letter of the 
charter. [Bank charter, sections 15, 16.] (11) 

Well, sir, here is a bilateral contract; each of these sections is a considera- 
tion for the other. The 15th section prescribes burdensome duties to be per- 
‘formed by the Bank, gratuitously, for the benefit of the nation; and the Bank 
stipulates to perform them during the continuance of the act. 

The 16th section is the counter-stipulation, pledging the faith of the nation 
that, unless for good and sufficient cause, the deposites of the public moneys 
shall be made in the Bank and its branches. Now, that good and sufficient 
cause cannot be the approach of the term when the charter will expire, be- 
cause the stipulation of the Bank is to perform the services during the con- 
tinuance of the act; and the 16th section is not only the counter-stipulation 
of the nation, but it furnishes the only means by which the Bank can perform 
its own engagement in the 15th. The two sections are inseparably connected 
together, and must be of commensurate duration. So clear and obvious is 
this, that the Secretary of the ‘Treasury, by removing the deposites, has for- 
feited the right of the nation to claim of the Bank the fulfilment of its own 
stipulations in the 15th section. By the very act of removing the deposites, 
he makes it impossible for the Bank to give the necessary facilities for trans- 
ferring the public funds from place to place, without charge, commission, or 
discount. The Bank stipulates to perform this service during the continuance 
of the act. The Secretary of the Treasury takes from the Bank the neces- 


(11) Bank Charter. 


Sec. 15. And be it further enacted, That, puRING THE CONTINUANCE OF THIS AcT, and 
whenever required by the Secretary of the Treasury, the said corporation shall give the 
necessary facilities fur transferring the public funds from place to place, within the 
United States, or the Territories thereof, and for distributing the same in payment of 
the public creditors, without charging commissions, or claiming allowance, on account 
of difference of exchange; and shall also do and perform the several and respective 
duties of the Commissioners of Loans for the:several States, or of any one or more of 
them, wherever required by law. : 

Src. 16. And be it further enacted, That the deposites of the money of the United 
States, in places in which the said Bank and branches thereof may be established, shall 
be made in said Bank or branches thereof, unless the Secretary of the Treasury shall 
at any time otherwise order and direct ; in which case, the Secretary of the Treasury 
shall immediately lay before Congress, if in session, and if not, immediately after the 
commencement of the next session, the reasons of such order or direction. 


N 


23 


“sary means for performing the service while the act continues, and two years 
and a half before its expiration. 

Here, then, is a double violation of the public faith: first, by breaking the 
‘Stipulation of the nation in the 16th section, beneficial to the Bank; and 
‘secondly, by disabling the Bank from the performance of its engagements in 
the 15th section, beneficial to the nation. 

Sir, this transfer of public funds from place to place throughout the whole 
‘Union, this security for the punctual payment of every public debt to every 
‘public creditor without charge of commission or discount for exchange, is one 
‘of the great purposes for which the Bank of the United States was instituted. 
Tt is one of the most admirable operations that the Government, over an ex- 
tensive territory and a numerous ‘population, active, intelligent, enterprising, 
eager for the betterment of its own condition, can perform. It is my belief, 
sir, that no other instrument than a bank, of large capital, of immense _busi- 
ness, ably and honegtly managed, and, consequently, of credit co-extensive 
with the country over which its operations are authorized, can effectually ac- 
complish this great national purpose. 

The Bank of the United States was bound to perform it by stipulation and 
by law. The Bank of the United States has performed it faithfully from the 
time when it was instituted, until the Secretary of the Treasury interdicted 
the further performance of it, by withdrawing from the Bank the means of 
performance. The Secretary of the Treasury has forbidden the Bank of the 
United States to make this constant, continual, gratuitous remittance of public 
moneys for the payment of public creditors, from place to place throughout 
the Union; and what has he substituted in its place?’ Why, sir, contracts— 
contracts which he was authorized by no law to make; contracts, which, by 
the 16th section of the act of May 1, 1820, (12) he was expressly forbidden 
to make; contracts with a motley multitude of State banks, bound by no law 
of the United States to perform this service; beyond the superintendence and 
control of Congress; dependent upon twenty different States for their charters; 
of small capitals; of limited circulation; seated in the midst of rival banks, 
and in which the United States have no interest other than the deposites con- 
fided to them. This is the substitute provided by the Secretary of the Trea- 
sury for annulling the law by which the Bank of the United States was bound 
to perform, and did perform, this immensely important service! Contracts 
with State banks; not even as contracts sanctioned by law! Sir, it is a bruised 
reed upon which, if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it! Con- 
tracts! Why, suppose, one and all these bubble banks break their contracts; 
suppose they suspend specie payments; where are your deposites? Where 
are your gratuitous remittances? Where is your remedy against all and every 
one of them? Where is yourremedy? State courts, stop laws, and unavail- 
able funds! Precious consolations for the disgrace of violated. public faith! 
Precious indemnity for the word of honor of the nation! 

Mr. Speaker, let me not be misunderstood. I intend no special or personal 
reflection upon any one of these banks, nor upon any individual concerned 


(12) An actin addition to the several acts for the establishment and regulation of the Trea- 
sury, War, and Navy Departments. (Approved 1st May, 1820.) 


Src. 6. And be it further enacted, That NO CONTRACT shall hereafter be made by 
the Secretary of State, OR OF THE TREASURY, or of the Department of War, or of 
the Navy, except under a law authorizing the same, or under an appropriation adequate 
to its fulfilment; and excepting, also, contracts for the subsistence and clothing of the 
army or navy, and contracts by the Quartermaster’s Department, which may be made 
‘by the Secretaries of those Departments. 


24 


in the direction of them. Some of them may be safe depositories for ordinary: 
times; but from all the statements that have been published of their condition,. 
I believe it to be eminently perilous. There is scarcely one of them that. 
has less than seven dollars of its bills in circulation for one dollar of specie in 
its vaults. The Bank of the United States has less than two dollars in out-- 
standing notes for one dollar of specie at command. And what confidence 
is due even to the statements made by these banks of their condition, may be 
inferred from facts of recent notoriety. We have witnessed the explosion of” 
the Bank of Maryland. That bank, it is known, was one of those to which 
proposals were made by the agent from the Treasury Department, that it 
should become one of the public depositories. The selection was to be made 
between that and the Union Bank. It has been stated in the official journal, 
that the Secretary of the Treasury referred the choice between the two to the 
President of the United States, only remarking that he himself had an inter- 
est in the Union Bank, and that the Bank of Maryland had a smaller capital 
than the other. It is thence clearly to be inferred, that he was sensible his. 
interest in the Union Bank formed an objection to its being selected, and 
that he had nothing to set off against that objection but the smallness of the 
capital of the Bank of Maryland. Now what sort of astatement of its condi-- 
tion is it possible that the Bank of Maryland should have furnished to the 
Secretary of the Treasury, which left him undetermined whether to take that 
or the Union Bank for the public, depository at Baltimore? So much so, ‘as. 
to take the President of the United States for umpire between them. Bad 
as was the condition of the Bank of Maryland, its directors were quite ready 
and willing to contract for receiving the public deposites, and to furnish to the 
Secretary of the Treasury such a statement of their affairs as to satisfy him 
that they were safe depositories. And who knows how much more confidence: 
was due to the statements by any of the other chosen banks, of their own 
condition, than to that of the Bank of Maryland? The breaking of banks is* 
always fraudulent, ‘and must always be preceded by reiterated false or falla-- 
cious statements of their condition. We have become so much familiarized 
with this bursting of bank boilers, that it has become in public estimation al-. 
most a virtue, a mere ingenious contrivance to make a fortune. There are no. 
doubt many sound and solvent State banks, with honest, honorable, and con- 
scientious boards of directors. But any bank, to which the aid of the public 
deposites is necessary for its safety, cannot be fit for a public depository... 
Upon the real condition of all the State banks in the State of New York, the 
recent act of the Legislature, taxing the people of the State with a loan of six 
millions of dollars, to save them from breaking, is a commentary of very un-- 
equivocal significancy. The people of New York, to the amount of six mil- 
lions of dollars are now made the collateral security for the debts of their 
banks. But this is a mere substitute for a new bank with a capital of six mil-. 
lions; and what must be its effect? An increase of liabilities in proportion to 
the capitals of all the banks; an increase of paper currency; a mere repetition, 
in varied form, of the experiment made between the extinction of the first 
Bank of the United States and the institution of the second. There is, indeed, 
some indication in this measure of a design in the government of New York 
to supply a currency to take the place of the United States Bank notes 
throughout the Union. If so, the device is not destitute of ingenuity. But it 
must expect, in the course of its execution, to encounter rivals; and the peo-- 
ple and the Legislature of Pennsylvania will, in the process of time, be likely 


to discover that there are more things in Heaven and earth than have been» 
dreamed of in their philosophy. ¥ 


\ 


25 


The first reason, then, assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury for the 
withdrawal of the deposited public funds from the Bank of the United States, 
is good for nothing. Are the reasons founded upon the alleged misconduct 
of the Bank any better? 

Sir, there is one ingredient in them, an exceedingly odious one, from 
which that is at least exempt. The near approach of the time when the 
Bank charter will expire involves no dishonorable imputation upon any. man.. 
But when dishonest and corrupt conduct is charged upon the Bank of the 
United States, the reproach nominally cast upon the Bank really falls upon 
living men; and upon whom does it fall? Upon the president and stock di- 
rectors of the Bank. And who are the President and stock directors of the 
Bank? The president is a citizen of Philadelphia, whom any man in this. 
hall may be justly proud to call his friend; a man of eminent ability, of a 
highly cultivated mind, of an equable and placid temper, and in every other 
relation of life, of integrity irreproachable and unreproached; a man, too, in- 
dependent in his circumstances, and to whom the loss of his office could 
scarcely be felt as a misfortune. That office he holds by the choice, annually 
renewed, of the stockholders. From the time when he was first chosen pre- 
sident, for a succession of ten years, until and ‘including the year 1832, he 
had been nominated by the President, and confirmed by the Senate of the 
United States, as one of the Government directors of the Bank. And even 
‘now, after all these charges and denunciations against him, he has twice re- 
ceived the honorable testimonial of his fellow-citizens, by being unanimously 
elected president of the trustees of the Girard College. The directors are 
chiefly merchants, with one or two eminent lawyers, of Philadelphia; men of 
good estate and good name; interested, as stockholders, in the Bank; serving 
gratuitously, and never eligible more than three years in succession. Sir, 
that such persons should be charged with dishonesty and corruption by bank~- 
rupts and swindlers, by men of scarified characters and dogs-eared reputations, 
or by politicians who, like the wind of a West India hurricane, can chop round 
from north to south and from east to west in the twinkling of an eye, and 
blow with equal fury either way, is not at all surprising; but men of honest 
fame, and such I should be willing ‘to believe the Secretary of the Treasury 
to be, should not slander one another. 

Mr. Speaker, there is another idea which, in connexion with this subject, 
I wish to present to the consideration of the House. In the conjectural im- 
putation of base and corrupt conduct to men having a stake of reputation in 
social intercourse, there should be some proportion between the heinousness 
of the offence imputed and the magnitude of the object to be attained by its. 
commission. In the melancholy records of human infirmity, I know it is not 
unexampled to find very great crimes committed for very small purposes. But 
these are exceptions and not rules. Such is not the course of things in the 
ordinary moral economy of the world’s affairs: What is the re-charter of 
the Bank of the United States to the president and to the board of present 
directors? It is of very little if of any importance to their individual inter- 
est. But as they hold their offices in trust, for the benefit of the company, 
their duty to their constituents requires that they should, in a suitable man- 
ner and by lawful means, obtain a new charter if they can; their own inter- 
est in the event is nothing, or next to nothing. It is also their right as citizens, 
and their duty to their constituents, to defend themselves against charges of 
misconduct and corruption. And if those charges are made from the high 
places of the land; if they are made for electioneering purposes; if they are 
made not before judicial tribunals, where their honest fame would be sheltered 


26 


‘by the protection of the laws, and vindicated by the verdict of their peers; if 
they are circulated by multitudes of presses, paid with the money of the peo- 
ple; if they are held forth in Presidential messages, and vetoes, and proclama- 
tions, and cabinet consultations, published in newspapers, and denied to the 
legislative assemblies of the Union; if, in short, the rancorous and incessant 
denunciations against them go forth directly to the people from the First 
Magistrate of the Union, is it necessary? is it rational!—is it consistent with 
common justice or common sense—to charge them with corruption or dishon- 
esty for defending themselves before that tribunal of public opinion, to which 
the appeal is made against them? Sir, in tracing, by mere conjectural sa- - 
gacity, human actions to their motives, when you meet honesty at the thresh- 
old, it is a poor occupation to ransack dark corners and deep recesses to 
detect corruption. 

But, sir, the Secretary of the Treasury, distrusting the validity of his 
reason for removing the public deposites, drawn from the approach of the 
term when the Bank charter will expire, charges the president and stock 
directors of the Bank with misconduct—with corruption! 

Sir, with regard to any allegation of corruption on the part of the Bank, 
by which, in the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury, the corporation 
have forfeited the right of holding the deposites, I believe it not within the 
competency, either of the Secretary of the Treasury, or of this House, to 
come to that conclusion. The corporation is a moral person, entitled to the 
rights of persons and amenable, not to the Secretary of the Treasury nor to 
this House, but to the judicial tribunals, for the performance of its duties. 
if the corporation have done wrong to the Executive Government, the At- 
torney General is the officer to prosecute them before the courts instituted 
under the constitution to sit in judgment upon them. They are entitled to ' 
trial bya jury of their peers. 

The President of the United States has announced to Congress his opin- 
ion that the Bank had forfeited the charter, and that he would have directed 
a scire facias to be sued out to prove this charge, but that there would not 
have been time for the Supreme Court to bring the trial to an issue before 
the expiration of the charter of the Bank. Iremark with reluctance upon 
this statement of the President; but do say that it is not a sufficient reason 
for withholding the public deposites from the Bank. The President and the Se- 
cretary of the Treasury, by these declarations, constitute themselves the accu- 
sers of the Bank. Shall they sit in judgment upon those whom they accuse? 
Shall they be the executioners of those upon whom they sit in judgment? 
The removal of the deposites from the Bank, for the misconduct of the Bank, 
necessarily imports all this. The Secretary of the Treasury, under the di- 
rection of the President, constitutes hirnself at once the accuser, the judge, 
jury, and executioner of the Bank. He draws up the charge, he pronounces 
sentence of guilt, he adjudges the forfeiture of the right, and he executes the 
judgment. All this he does by the removal of the deposites; all this he does, 
without hearing the parties accused, without even giving them notice of the 
charges against them. Sir, in the fictions of the heathen mythology, Rhada- 
manthus himself, the most inexorable of the judges of the infernal regions, 
heard the culprits at his bar, after chastising them; ‘* Castigatque auditque.”* 
He chastises and he hears. Our Secretary of the Treasury improves upon 
the code of Rhadamanthus. He accuses, he judges, he chastises, but never 
gives the culprit a hearing, either before or after his sentence. | 

Now, sir, I say this to show the insufficiency of this reason for withhold- 


éng from the Bank the deposites of the public funds; the alleged, not the 
proved misconduct of the Bank. : 


27 


And this misconduct—what is it? Asa moral’ person, the Bank enjoys 
the rights of persons; and among them the right to sue and be sued, to plead 
and be impleaded, to answer and be answered, to defend and be defended, in 
all State courts having competent jurisdiction, and in all the circuit courts of 
the United States. The fifth article amendatory of the constitution of the 
United States has expressly provided that no person shall be deprived of life, 
liberty, or property, without due process of law. The Secretary of the 
Treasury has no authority to constitute a code of criminal Jaw, or to hold the 
Bank responsible for offences not recognised as such by law. He has no 
authority to make that an offence which is not prohibited by law. Of all his 
charges against the Bank, the only one that I can see which imputes a trans- 
gression of the law, is that which alleges that the president and directors have: 
authorized a committee of their own body, called the Exchange Committee, 
to transact business, for which, by the charter, the presence of not less than 
seven directors isrequired. Now, this charge arises from a misapprehension 
by the Secretary of the Treasury of the import of the words to transact bu- 
siness. This has been so fully explained by the learned and eloquent mem- 
ber from Pennsylvania, that I deem it unnecessary to say a word further upon 
the subject. To the weight of his character, were it possible for any testi- 
mony of mine to make addition, nothing but his presence could interdict me 
from giving it. At the head of his profession, which is the law, in the State 
to which he belongs, to that profession he has until even now, that we first 
see him among us, devoted the labors of more than thirty years; conversant 
especially with the department of commercial law, and intimately familiar 
with the principles and practice of banking, as a director both of the old and 
of the present Bank of the United States, his voice must carry with it, on all 
these questions, an authority,which it becomes me peculiarly to respect. He 
did, sir, in his speech, so unanswerably refute this allegation of the Secretary 
of the Treasury, that the transaction of business by the Exchange Committee 
was a violation of the words of the charter, that it would be wasting the time 
of the House to multiply words in repeating what he has said. 

But, sir, in assigning his reasons for punishing the Bank by the removal of 
the public deposites, the Secretary of the Treasury has not only performed 
in his own person the parts of accuser, judge, jury, and executioner, but, to 
facilitate the performance of all these functions, he has constituted himself 
ex post facto the legislator of a new criminal code, and promulgated new 
penal statutes, by which these heinous offenders are to be tried and con- 
demned. 

And what are these heinous crimes of the Bank for which its stockholders, 
including the whole people of the Union, have, by the judgment of the self- 
constituted legislator, forfeited their rights and their property?’ They are, 

1. That the ruling principle of the Bank is its own interests. 

2. That the Bank has used its means with a view to obtain political power, 
and thereby secure the renewal of its charter. 

To the first charge, it is added that the just claims of the public are treated 
by the Bank with but little regard when they have come into collision with” 
the interests of the corporation. 

Mr. Speaker, in one of Shakspeare’s plays, there. are two personages of 
the department of the kitchen, named Launce and Speed; one of them, 
Launce, takes a fancy to be married, and falls in love with a milk-maid, 
who, he says, has more qualities than a water-spaniel. He communicates te 
his friend Speed a written cat-log of her conditions, that is, of her virtues 
and her vices. In reading it over, Speed finds, in the enumeration of her 


28 


vices, that she is slow in words}; upon which Launce exclaims, ‘‘O villain! set 
that down among her vices? To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue— 
out with it, and place it as her chief virtue.” Sir, when I hear it charged 
upon the Bank of the United States, that is, upon the President and stock 
directors of that Bank, that the interests of the corporation are their ruling 
principle, and hear it charged as a vice of the Bank, I cannot help thinking, 
like Launce, that it should be transferred to the other side of the account, 
and set down among the Bank’s chief virtues. Why, sir, for what are the 
president and directors of the Bank appointed but to protect, to defend, and 
to promote the interests of the corporation? and what are the interests of the 
corporation but the interests of our constituents, the people of the United 
States, who, as owners of one-fifth part of the stock, constitute themselves 
one-fifth part of the corporation? Sir, in complaining that the interests of 
the corporation are the ruling principle of the president and directors of the 
Bank, the Secretary of the Treasury has given the most signal testimonial to 
their fidelity to their trust. Their ruling principle ought to be, as I most 
sincerely believe it is, the interests of the corporation. Sir, that ruling prin- 
ciple cannot make them regardless of the just claims of the public; it can- 
not come in.collision with the just claims of the public; the just claims 
of the public are identical and the same with the interests of the corpo- 
ration. There is, in this charge of the Secretary of the Treasury against 
the Bank, inconsistency and self-contradiction. It is precisely the same as 
if he had said, so exclusive is the regard of the president and directors of 
the Bank to the public interest, that they pay no regard to it at all. And, 
sir, this inconsistency and self-contradiction run through the whole argument, 
and discolor every fact adduced by the Secretary in support of his charge. 
Take, for example, the case of the three per,cent. stocks, and the bill of 
exchange upon France, which are urged by the Secretary as the great proofs 
of the injustice of the Bank, in endeavoring to advance its own interests at 
the expense of the interests and just rights of the people of the United 
States. : 

What was the case of the three per cents?’ The Bank was required to 
pay off, say twelve millions of the public debt, which bore an interest of 
three per cent. a year, to’pay it off at two given days, in the year 1832; the 
Bank paid it off accordingly. Part of this debt, however, was due in Europe, 
say five millions..The Bank negotiated an arrangement, by which the Euro- 
pean holders of the debt consented to wait a year longer before they should 
receive payment of their portion, they taking the Bank for their debtor in- 
stead of the nation, and receiving three per cent. for the year’s interest. 
This was equivalent for the time to so much addition to the capital of the 
Bank. It enabled the Bank to accommodate borrowers here to double the 
amount, for the year, and to receive therefor an interest of six per cent. The 
profit to the Bank was the difference between three per cent., which she 
paid on say five millions, and six per cent. interest, which she received on 
double the amount which it enabled her during the same time to loan. But 
suppose it enabled the Bank to loan only to the same amount. She paid one 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the use of the money, and received 
three hundred thousand dollars by the employment of it. Suppose, however, 
that it enabled her only to keep at discount a sum equal to that which she 
borrowed. Her profit upon the transaction was one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars, one-fifth of which, say thirty thousand dollars, she paid in divi- 
dends to the people of the United States. Undoubtedly, the ruling principle 
of this transaction was the interest of the corporation; but where can you 
find in it the slightest, the remotest injury to the interests or the just rights 


29 


of the people of the United States? It brought thirty thousand dollars into 
their treasury; it furnished capital for profitable employment to thousands of 
our citizens, and I am unable to perceive any interest or any right of the 
public which could be impaired or injured by it to the value of a dollar. 

The case of the protested bill of exchange upon the French Government 
is equally justifiable. If the Secretary of the Treasury had the right to draw 
this bill, there can be no question that the French Government is responsible 
for the damages universally claimable on the protest. The protest itself 
vested in the United States the right to the damages, and in the Bank the 
right to claim them, as clear and indisputable as the right to repayment of 
the bill itself. These damages were equally recoverable by the laws of the 
land; and they were the property of the corporation. Had the president and 
directors remitted them, they would have committed a breach of trust to the 
stockholders utterly indefensible. The loss to the public in this transaction 
lies at the door either of the French Government, or of the drawer of) the 
bill. ‘The pretension that the Bank were bound, in this case, to remit the 
damages upon the protest, is, in substance, a claim to exemption from the 
laws of the land by the Secretary of the*Treasury, in matters of exchange. 
The admission of it would have established a precedent liable to the most 
dangerous abuse. It was nothing less than a pretension that the Secretary of 
the Treasury should be released from all responsibility for damages upon 
bills drawn by him on foreign Governments, and protested. | 

But what shall be said of the heinous sin of the Bank in using its means 
with a view to obtain political power? 'The evidence alleged by the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, as substantiating this enormity, is the disclosure by the 
lynx-eyed penetration of certain patriotic detectors of the politics of their 
colleagues, appointed, it seems, for that purpose, by the President, with the 
unwary confirmation of the Senate. They are called Government directors, 
and they seem to consider themselves as ex officio viceroys and spies over 
_ the rest of the board. The exceeding sagacity of these eager searchers into 
mysteries has brought to light the astonishing fact that their brethren in the 
direction of the Bank have, by recorded resolutions of the board, put the 
whole thirty-five millions of dollars of the capital of the stockholders, in- 
cluding the seven millions belonging to the people of the United States, the 
whole mass of the profits on business accumulating for distribution in divi- 
dends and a reserved fund, and the whole credit of the Bank, which can 
scarcely be estimated at less than one hundred millions of dollars, at the dis- 
posal of the president of the Bank, to print and circulate pamphlets, in de- 
fence of the Bank, against slanderous and hostile denunciations, or, in the 
construction of the Secretary of the Treasury, to obtain political power. Of 
this sum, perhaps one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, it appears that, 
in the space of four years, an amount not much short of sixty thousand dol- 
lars has actually been expended in printing and extensively circulating a 
treatise upon banking and currency by Mr. Gallatin, three or four reports of 
committees of Congress, and two or three speeches in refutation of charges 
against the Bank. 

This charge, Mr. Speaker, is two-fold. First, of the power given to the 
president.to dispose of the whole property of the Bank. And, secondly, of 
the expenditure by him, under that power, of a sum approaching to sixty 
thousand dollars. The substance of the charge is of wasteful and corrupt 
profusion of the property of the stockholders; and the argument, by blending 
together the two parts of the accusation, labors to swell the account of actual 
expenditure up to the whole extent of the power delegated to the presidents 


30 


so that the Secretary of the Treasury has worked himself up into a belief, 
and his argument would persuade us, that the whole capital, profits, and cre- 
dit of the Bank had been actually wasted, or was in most imminent danger 
of being squandered in printing and circulating pamphlets to obtain political 
power. 

And now, sir, what becomes of that other grievous accusation, that the 
anterests of the corporation are the ruling principle of the president and di- 
rectors of the Bank? Which of the two impeachments are we to believe? Is 
the Bank a Shylock, with his knife in hand, ready to cut the pound of flesh 
nearest to the heart of his unfortunate debtor? Or is he a Timon of Athens, 
to whom the world is but a word, which, were it his, a breath would give 
away? Sir, we have looked at the charge of extortion, and it has vanished 
into air. Let us examine the charge of profusion, and see if it is more sub- 
stantial. Look at it in both its parts. The resolution of the directors is, 
that the president of the Bank be authorized to cause to be prepared and 
circulated such documents and papers as may communicate to the people 
information in regard to the nature and operations of the Bank. 

Sir, can any one in serious argument say that this resolution put the whole 
property of the Bank at the disposal of the president? Suppose it had been 
a resolution authorizing him to purchase a box of wafers, or a bunch of quills? 
According to this argument, such a resolution would have put a hundred and 
fifty millions of dollars of the Bank’s property at the disposal of the presi-- 
dent to buy a box of wafers, or a bunch of quills. The quintessence of this 
charge is, that the Board of Directors did not put this resolution in the form 
of a Congressional act of appropriation. Sir, the constitution of the United 
States provides that no moneys shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in 
consequence of appropriations made by law; and hence arises the necessity 
of limiting the amount of appropriations. But how often, in our own practice, 
do we authorize expenditures without limiting their amount? It was but the 
other day that we authorized the clerk of this House to purchase books for — 
the use of our members. Did we put the whole Treasury of the United 
States at his disposal for that purpose? Sir, to authorize an expenditure, 
and to make an appropriation, are things totally distinct from each other, 
although nothing is more common than to confound them together. The 
resolution of the Bank directors authorizes an expenditure without making 
an appropriation. But the Secretary of the Treasury must be at the last . 
gasp for an argument, to say that thereby they put the whole property of the’ 
Bank at the disposal of the president for that purpose. As the Legislature 
of the nation, Congress can authorize no expenditure without making an ap- 
propriation. But no such principle is applicable to the expenditures of indi- 
viduals, whether single persons or corporations. A member of the. other 
House once told the Senate, that, in the arrangement of his domestic esta- 
blishment, his wife was the Committee of Ways and he was the Committee: 
of Means; but who ever heard of a man’s limiting his expenses of marketing: 
for the family, or his wife’s disbursements for a bonnet, a necklace, or a 
shawl, by an act of appropriation? The authority, therefore, to print and: 
circulate pamphlets, was precisely equivalent to an authority to procure sta~ 
tionary, and carried its limitation with itself. It was left discretionary, pre-- 
cisely because it was limited in its own nature. But the Secretary of the 
Treasury tells us that “the sum actually charged to the expenses under this. 
resoluticn is sufficiently 'startling.” Startling? Is it, indeed? 

The sum actually charged in these expenditures, in four years, amounts to 


$58,265 05, in round numbers take it to be $60,000. The Bank alleges: 


31 


that all this expenditure was incurred in defending the institution against tlie 
assaults which it was enduring from the administration and its partisans. 
The President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury con- 
sider it all as electioneering against the re-election of President Jackson. 
Now, if the printing and circulating of an essay of Mr. Gallatin upon bank- 
ing, and of half a dozen reports and speeches made to the two Houses of 
Congress upon the subject of the Bank itself and its operations, was elec- 
tioneering against the re-election of the President, what was the electioneer- 
ing for him? The President and the Secretary of the Treasury both con- 
sider the re-election of Andrew Jackson as precisely equivalent to a judg- 
ment of the people of the United States against the Bank. What is this 
but to declare that every thing said and done by the President, during the 
first term of his administration, against the Bank, was electioneering for him- 
self? All his appeals to the judgment, to the prejudices, to the passions of 
the people against the Bank, were all operations to secure his re-election. 
This is ground, sir, not of my selection; it is that upon which the President 
of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury themselves have 
chosen to put their charges against the Bank; and whatever I may say in 
following the deductions which irresistibly flow from this statement of the 
case, must be taken as the necessary inferences from premises exclusively 
their own. ‘ 

Thus, when, in the summer of 1829, the friends of General Jackson, in 
New Hampshire, undertook to dictate, through the agency of the then Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, to the Bank, the removal of the president of the branch 
bank at Portsmouth, whose offences were his eminent talents, his in- 
flexible integrity, and his friendship for Mr. Webster; and when the same 
* friends of General Jackson in New Hampshire,” and among them sixty 
members of the Legislature, sterling Jacksonmen without alloy, sent a whole 
list of directors for the same branch, to be forced upon the president and di- 
rectors of the Bank for their appointment; when the then Secretary of the 
Treasury, with an acuteness of discrimination worthy of the keenest disciple 
of Ignatius Loyola, blended together so skilfully the lines of political purity 
and political prostitution, for the use of the Bank—it was all electioneering 
for the re-election of President Jackson. 

When the Secretary of War, by unlawful orders, took away the payments 
of pensions in New Hampshire and New York from the branch banks, and 
gave them to the banks belonging to the ‘friends of General Jackson” —it 
was all electioneering for his re-election to the Presidency. 

When, upon discovering that the Bank was not so tractable under this 
management as might be desired, the President of the United States, in his 
first annual message to Congress, denounced the Bank of the United States 
as unconstitutional, but recommended a Government Bank in its stead—this 
was in both its parts a mere electioneering proposition to secure his own 
re-election. 

When in the subsequent annuat messages to Congress of 1830, of 1831,. 
and 1832, the denunciations of the Bank of the United States as unconstitu-. 
tional were repeated; and when the substance of these denunciations was. 
communicated by anticipation, for the benefit of certain brokers in Wall- 
street, ‘‘ friends of General Jackson,” before the message was communicated 
to Congress—this was a mere electioneering expedient to secure his own re- 
election. 

When, in July, 1832, an act for rechartering the Bank of the United 
States had passed both Houses of Congress, immediately after a full inyesti- 


32 


gation of the affairs of the Bank by a committee of this House, the President 
put his negative upon that act, and told Congress that if they had applied to 
him, he would have given them a constitutional bank—this veto was a mere 
electioneering expedient, and the veto message was a pamphlet to secure his 
own re-election. : 

Mr. Speaker, I repeat that these are not positions of my own choosing; I 
say they follow irresistibly from the ground of controversy with the Bank, 

_taken by the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Trea- 
sury themselves. Ifthe pamphlets, published and circulated by the Bank in 
their own defence, are to be considered as political weapons of electioneering 
against the re-election of the President, then the efforts of his administration 
to turn the Bank into a political engine to promote the purposes of his par- 
tisans, and, upon failure of them, all his subsequent denunciations of the Bank, 
and acts of hostility to that institution, were acts of mere electioneering for 
himself. His hostility to the Bank was a mere courtship of popular favor, 
and his mode of filling the measure of his country’s glory was by using the 
unpopularity of the Bank as the engine to renew his lease of the Government, 
and to prolong his continuance in power. Sir, it is filling the measure of his 
country’s glory with sparkling champagne; all the liquor overflows, and there 
is nothing left in the cup. 

And now, sir, let us follow the track of the Secretary of the Treasury, and 
inquire what has been the cost of this contested election to the people of the 
United States. The Secretary of the Treasury tells you that the sum of 
sixty thousand dollars, spent in the space of four years upon electioneering 
pamphlets by the Bank, is sufficiently startling. Startling, Mr. Speaker, 
is an emotion, and not a calculation; the word is sensitive, and not medita- 
itive; it indicates passion, and not reflection. It is not the word or the thing 
best adapted to the operations of a financier. Calculation is always cool. 
Let us keep ourselves cool and compare accounts. The Bank, in the course 
of four years, have spent sixty thousand dollars in printing and paper, they 
say in self-defence; the President of the United States says, in electioneer- 
ing against him, and for a recharter to themselves. This money was the 
property of the stockholders, and one-fifth part of it, twelve thousand dol- 
lars, belonged to the people of the United States. Sir, the people of. the 
United States own seventy thousand shares of the stock of this Bank. When 
the President of the United States declared war against the institution, every 


one of those shares was worth one hundred and thirty dollars. What are 


they worth now? At the utmost, one hundred and five dollars a share. Com- 
pare the prices current of the two periods, and you will find that every share 
of the Bank stock owned by the people of the United States, has lost twenty- 
five dollars of its value to them by this electioneering of the President of the 
United States, against the Bank, and for himself. Twenty-five dollars a share, 
upon seventy thousand shares, is one million seven hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars; and this is the sum which the President of the United States has 
Jevied upon the people, by his electioneering against the Bank and for himself. 

Thus, then, stand the comparative accounts. The bank has cost the 
people of the United States, in electioneering against the President, and for 
‘itself, twelve thousand dollars. The President has cost the people, in 
-electioneering against the Bank, and for himself, one million seven hundred 
-and fifty thousand dollars. And in this same contest of electioneering, while 
the bank has expended forty-eight thousand dollars of the money of the 
other stockholders, the President of the United States has taxed them to the 
‘amount of seven millions of dollars. Eight millions seyen hundred and fifty 

* 


Jf 


* 


Po ot 


33 


thousand dollars is the sum levied by the President of the United States upon 
the stockholders of the Bank, for his electioneering; and the Secretary of the 
Treasury tells us that sixty thousand dollars expended in the same contest by 
the Bank is sufficiently startling. 

There is, indeed, this difference betweey the sixty thousand dollars money 
of the stockholders, expended in this eontest by the Bank, and the eight mil- 
lions seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the same money levied in 
the same contest by the President.) With the sixty thousand dollars, industry 
was employed, and for them an equivalent was received. Information was. 
circulated among the people upon subjects deeply affecting their own inter- 
ests, and the materials were supplied for making up a correct public opinion, 
‘But the eight millions seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars tax levied 
upon the stockholders of the Bank by the President of the United States, in 
electioneering for himself, are so much property destroyed. They are so. 
much of the capital stock of the nation consumed as by fire; no information 
has been communicated by their destruction to the people; no industry has. 
been employed; no equivalent for the loss received. Far otherwise. If 
there be a widow, or an orphan, whose dower or whose inheritance consisted 
of ten shares in the stock of the Bank, a tax of twenty-five dollars upon 
each and every one of those shares has been levied upon that widow or 
orphan, as contributions to his re-election. So much of their property has 
been taken away from them, not for the benefit of others, but to be de- 
stroyed, The capital stock of the Bank of the United States, on the first 
of January, 1832, was worth, in the market, at least forty-five millions of 
dollars, and every stockholder in that institution might have paid his debts or 
purchased lands with his stock, at an advance of thirty per cent. To pay 
debts or to purchase lands at this day, the same stock may be applied at an 
advance of two, three, or, at most, four per cent. The difference is the tax 
levied by the President of the United States for his re-election, and his war- 
fare against the Bank. Not spent in printing and circulating pamphlets, and 
propitiating printers, but nullified, destroyed; sunk in depreciation without 
benefit to any human being. 

‘Thus, then, the reasons of the Secretary of the Treasury, for removing 
the public deposites from the Bank of the United States and its branches, are 
insufficient. ‘They are insufficient even for ordering and directing otherwise 
than that the deposites should be made there, which was the whole extent of his 
lawful authority. They are worse than insufficient for removing from them - 
funds which had been already deposited there; for which he had no lawfal 
authority, and which was usurpation. 

Mr. Speaker, I believe these charges of dishonesty and corruption equally 
ungenerous and unjust. They are ungenerous, because they are made under 
the protection of official station, against private citizens, in a manner which 
deprives them of the means of defending themselves and vindicating their 
characters. They are unjust, because made, not in the candid, open, and — 
explicit forms which ought to mark all official denunciations against indivi- 
duals, but in a manner consciously evasive and distrustful of itself, and be- 
cause they are untrue. 

I say they are made under the protection of official station against private 
citizens; for, sir, let it be remembered that the president and stock directors 
of the Bank of the United States are not officers of the Government. They 
are neither appointed, nor removable by the President of the United States. 
The United States hold seven millions of dollars of the stock. The Presi- 
dent and Senate appoint five out of the twenty-five directors, and the charter 

Sie 


34 


contains sundry provisions for making the Bank the agent of the Government 
for the performance of certain duties and services. But the president and 
stock directors are private citizens, entitled to the enjoyment of all the rights 
of other private citizens. The management of the affairs of the Bank is en- 
trusted to them, together with the Government directors, under the general 
law of corporations, of acting by majorities, and so long as they keep within 
the pale of action warranted by the laws of the land, a charge of dishonesty 
or corruption against them, uttered by the Bresident of the United States, or 
the Secretary of the Treasury, is neither more nor less than slander, emitted 
under the protection of official station against private citizens. This is both 
ungenerous and unjust. It is an abuse of the shelter of official station to cir- 
culate calumny with impunity. 

Observe, too, that those charges, deeply as they affect the character of 
private individuals, are never made directly against them by name. No! it 
is the Bank, that is the monster; the moneyed aristocracy; the mammoth 
corporation; that is the sink of corruption; the purse-proud tyrant, corrupt 
itself, and practising corruption upon the whole people! And to what an 
odious extent~have these charges been carried! Have you yourself, Mr. 
Speaker, been exempted from the general imputed contamination? Deeply 
as you may have been dipped in the Stygian waters of Jacksonism, are you 
yet not vulnerable at the heel? Has it not been given as a reason for re- 
moving the deposites only sixty days before the meeting of Congress, that, 
if the last Congress had been in session but one week longer, the Bank would 
have corrupted two-thirds of the members of both Houses, and purchased a 
recharter, beyond the reach of a veto? And were not we, ourselves, was not 
this present Congress held accessible to the same corruption, in advance? 
Was not this formally assigned as the reason for withdrawing the deposites 
without waiting for our meeting? And is not this infamous imputation au- 
thenticated beyond all daring of denial? Infamous, | say, to us, to the peo- 
ple who chose ns as their Representatives, and to the president and stock 
directors of the Bank, if true; infamous, if not true, in him who uttered it. 

Now, sir, to set you, and all the members of:both Houses of the last and 
of the present Congress aside, and, I say, strip the President and the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury of their official stations, and neither of them would 
dare to say to, or of, Nicholas Biddle, in the presence of credible witnesses, 
that he was a dishonest or corrupt man; and what I say of Nicholas Biddle, 
I say of Richard Willing, of Manual Eyre, of Matthew L. Bevan, of Am- 
brose White, of John Sergeant, of James C. Fisher, of Joshua Lippincott, of 
Charles Chauncey, of Matthew Newkirk, of Lawrence Lewis, and of John 
Holmes. ‘These were the directors of the Bank who published their defence 
against the denunciation of the President’s cabinet rescript of the 18th of 
September last. Now, I repeat, strip Andrew Jackson and Roger B. Taney 
of the little brief authority which invests them with the privilege of slander- 
ing their fellow-citizens with impunity, and neither of them would parE to 
charge any one of those men whom I have named, either before their faces, 
or any where in the presence of credible, impartial witnesses, with dishonesty 
or, corruption, either in general terms or by any one specification. Neither 
of them would dare go to the city of Philadelphia, and there, in any possible 
manner, avow a charge against any one of those men, which could make up 
an issue for a test of character by a verdict of their peers. It may, indeed, 
bea question whether even a President of the United States, or a Secretary 
of the Treasury, does possess the right of pouring forth slanders upon private — 
individuals, wholly without responsibility, to the laws protective of character. 


‘ 30.7 

It cannot be doubted, that, wnder color of the discharge of official duty, it is 
in the power of those high dignitaries to blast the reputation of individuals by 
groundless imputations, for which the injured party would in vain seek repa- 
ration or indemnity from the laws of his country. But, even this odious. pri- 
vilege has its limits. Neither a Secretary of the Treasury, nor a President 
of the United States, is wholly above the law. No one will deny that both 
those officers are, as individuals, liable to action or indictment for slanders, 
like others, and there seems to be a full consciousness of this, in the undeviat- 
ing uniformity with which they point their official defamation at the Bank, 
instead of directing their charges, as fair and honorable adversaries ought to 
do, at the president and stock directors of the Bank, the real objects of their 
accusations. 

’ When the President of the United States said that if the last Congress had 
continued in session one week longer, the Bank would, by corrupt means, 
have procured a recharter by majorities of two-thirds, in both Houses of 
Congress, to what portion of the members of both Houses did this honorable 
testimonial of his confidence specially apply? At the preceding session of the 
same Congress, a bill to recharter the Bank had passed the Senate by a vote 
of 28 to 20. It had passed inthe House by a vote of 107 to 85, and this was 
mmediately after an investigation of the affairs of the Bank, by a committee 
of the House, who went to Philadelphia for that express purpose, and every 
member of that committee is also a member of this House. Of the 107 
members of the House who voted for that recharter, 50 are members of this 
House; of the 85 members who voted against it, 41 are members of the pre- 
sent House; and there is in this proportion, on both sides, a coincidence so 
remarkable, that I cannot help inviting to it the attention of the House. It 
has been assumed by the President of the United States, and repeated by the 
Secretary of the Treasury, and by the report of the Committee of Ways and 
Means, that the re-election of the President, after his veto upon this very bill 
to recharter the Bank, is of itself equivalent to a verdict of the people against 
the Bank. Mr. Speaker, I shall not inquire what sort of an estimate this posi- 
tion supposes the people to have formed of all the other measures of a four 
years’ administration. It seems to me an admission, that in all the rest of 
his measures, the people saw and felt nothing, which could have secured to 
him his re-election, but that this crushing of the monster, was not only meri- 
torious in itself, but sufficient to outweigh a mass of demerit, in the whole 
system of the administration besides, which would have forfeited the claim to 
that approbation of the people of which the result of the election was the 
test. Sir, if the President of the United States is willing that his reputation 
as a statesman at the head of this Union, should go down upon the records 
of this age, to the admiration of after times, on the single and solitary 
oundation of his having destroyed the Bank of the United States, I can 
have no possible objection to his being gratified. He will suffer no injustice 
by having that measure applied to his foot as the standard, and then infer- 
ring from that the whole man. ‘ Ex pede Herculem,” all the rest will be 
perfectly congenial with it; and such I have no doubt will be the judgment 
of posterity. But, sir, if his re-election can, with any pretence of reason, be 
considered as an evidence of the sentence of condemnation by the people, 
against the Bank, then I say that the re-election of the members of the 
House, who voted for and against that bill to recharter the Bank, is evidence 
far more conclusive and unequivocal of the sentiments of the people with 
regard to the Bank and the recharter, than the Presidential election was or 
could be. Now, sir, every member of this House who voted for or against 


36 ‘ 
that bill to recharter the Bank, has passed through that ordeal of re-election 
since he gave that vote; and it so happens that the proportion of re-elected 
members of those who voted for and against the recharter, is precisely the 
same. One member of the House who voted for the recharter, Philip Dod- 
dridge, of Virginia, we soon after followed, in melancholy procession, to the 
grave; and sure I am, that there is not a Virginian heart who hears me, but 
will respond to me when I say that his vote was no feeble testimonial of the 
purity of purpose with which every vote was given on that occasion, which 
now stands recorded in association with his. Had he lived and consented to 
serve, there can be no doubt that he would still have been one of us. There 
would then have been 51 re-elected members of 107 members, who voted for 
the recharter; there are 41 of 85 who voted against it; and as 41 is to 85, so 
is 51 to 107. Sir, the doctrine of chances, and all the other elements which 
are mingled up in the process of electioneering throughout this whole Union, 
has not produced a variation from the proportion, to the amount of a single 
man; and what is the inference that I draw from this curious and extraordi- 
nary arithmetical demonstration? Why, sir, that all the members’ on both 
sides of the question, those who voted for and those who voted against the re- 
charter, faithfully represented the sentiments of their respective constituents; 
and this result, so uniform, of the elections to this House throughout the 
whole Union, is of itself an honorable vindication of the integrity of its mem- 
bers, from the baseness imputed to them by the Chief Executive Magistrate. 

This vindication, it must also be observed, is more necessary to that por- 
tion of the members of the House who voted against the recharter, and were 
the devoted friends of the President and of his administration, than to the. 
rest. It was from the 85 members who voted against the recharter that the 
recruits of corruption must have been levied, to constitute with the 107 who 
had already voted for the recharter, that majority of two-thirds which could 
have effected the recharter in defiance of the veto. Of the 85 names which 
stand thus recorded, 21 must have changed their votes from the negative to 
the affirmative before the recharter could have been accomplished by a ma- 
jority of two-thirds; and this is what the President of the United States con- 
sidered not only as practicable, but as certain to have been effected, by cor- 
rupt means, if the last session of Congress had continued one week longer. 
Mr. Speaker, I do not believe there was one member of the last Congress 
who voted against the rechartering of the Bank, who could have been in- 
duced to change his vote by corrupt means, had the president and directors 
of the Bank been base enough to attempt the use of them. I believe this 
imputation to have been as unjust as it was dishonorable to both the parties 
implicated in it. That it was cruelly ungenerous towards the friends of the 
administration in this House is my deliberate opinion; and, as I am well as- 
sured, that there was not one of them justly obnoxious to the suspicion, 
so there is no one of them who can be considered exempted from it: And 
now, when we reflect that this defamatory and disgraceful suspicion, har- 
bored, or professed against his own friends, supporters, and adherents, was 
the real and efficient cause, (to call it a reason would be to shame the term,) 
but that it was the real motive for the removal of the deposites during the recess 
of Congress, and only two months before its meeting, what can we do but 
hide our heads with shame? Sir, one of the duties of the President of the 
United States—a duty as sacred as that to which he is bound by his official 
oath, is that of maintaining unsullied the honor of his country. But how 
could the President of the United States assert, in the presence of any for- 
elgner, a claim to honorable principle or moral virtue, as attributes belonging 


57 


to his countrymen, when he is himself the first to cast the indelible stigma 
upon them. ‘Vale, venalis ciwitas, mox peritura, si emptorem invenias,” 
was the prophetic curse of Jugurtha upon Rome, in the days of her deep cor- 
ruption. If the imputations of the President of the United States upon his 
own partisans and supporters weré true, our country would already have found 
a purchaser. ; 

Mr. Speaker, the reason thus assigned by the President of the United 
States to his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Duane, for removing the pub- 
lic moneys from the Bank of the United States, before the meeting of Con- 
gress, is not among those which his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Taney, 
has assigned to Congress after their meeting. Thatit was the true and effi- 
cient cause of that removal is evident, not only from the positive testimony 
of Mr. Duane, in his third letter to the people of the United States, but from 
the utter futility of the reasons assigned by Mr. Taney. ‘There is an evidence 
in facts themselves, and in the characters of men, which authenticates testi- 
mony, beyond the reach,of denial. Mr. Duane states that after Mr. Reuben 
Mr. Whitney, on the very day when he, Mr. Duane, entered upon his duties 
as Secretary of the Treasury, had communicated to him the determination of 
the President to cause the public deposites to be removed before the meeting 
of Congress, the President himself, the second day after, confirmed the in- 
formation, and said, ‘‘that the matter under consideration was of vast conse- 
**quence to the country; that, unless the Bank was broken down, it would 
‘break us down; that if the last Congress had remained a week longer in ses- 
“sion, two-thirds would have been secured for the Bank by corrupt means, 
**and that the like result might be apprehended the next Congress; that such 
‘**a State bank agency must be put in operation before the meeting of Con- 
*foress as would show that the United States’ Bank was not necessary; and 
**thus some members would have no excuse for voting for it.”’ 

“* My suggestions (adds Mr. Duane) as to an inquiry by Congress as in 
** December, 1832, or a recourse to the judiciary, the President’ repelled, 
** saying it would be idle to rely upon either; referring, as to the judiciary, 
** to the decisions already made as indications of what would be the effect of 
** an appeal to them in future.” 

These, then, were the effective reasons of the President for requiring the 
removal of the deposites before the meeting of Congress. The corruptibility 
of the Congress itself, and the foregone decisions of the Supreme Court of 
the United States—the legislative and judicial authorities were alike despised 
and degraded. The Executive will was substituted in the place of both. 
These reasons had already been urged, without success, upon one Secretary 
of the Treasury, Louis McLane; he had been promoted out of office, and 
they were now pressed upon the judgment and pliability of another. He, too, 
was found refractory, and displaced. A third, more accommodating, was, ’ 
found in the person of Mr. Taney. To Aim the reasons of the President 
were all-sufficient, and he adopted them without reserve. They were all 
summed up in one— 


** Sic volo, sie 7 wheo, stet pro ratione voluntas.” — 


* 


It is to be regretted that the Secretary of the Treasury did not feel him- 
self at liberty to assign this reason. In my humble opinion it ought to have 
stood in front of all the rest. There is an air of conscious shamefacedness 
in the suppression of that which was so glaringly notorious; and something 
of an appearance of trifling, if not of mockery, in presenting a long array 
of reasons, omitting that which was at the foundation of them all. 


38 


In the annual message of the President of the United States to Congress, 
at the commencement of their last session, a complete system of administra- 
tion for the future Government of this Union was set forth at full length, the 
single principle of which was declared to,be to reduce the Government of 
the Union to a simple machine; and its ultimate object to sacrifice all other 
interests to those of the best part of the population. 'The simple machine 
was the means—the exclusive benefit of the best part of the population was 
the end of this system of Government. As illustrations of the great design, 
the message went much into detail upon four principal objects of national 
concernment, and the policy resultimg from the whole system was, the deter-- 
mination to give away all the public lands to the best part of the population; 
to withdraw all protection from domestic industry; to renounce forever all 
undertaking of internal improvements; and to annihilate the Bank of the: 
United States. 

The destruction of the Bank is but one of the four elements of this stu» 
pendous system. This, we have been told repeatedly by quasi officiaPauthor=- 
ity, had been resolved before ever the President left Tennessee to come and 
assume the reins of Government here. ‘The destruction of the Bank was 
necessary, both to the simplification of the machine, and to the accomplish- 
ment of the end. The Bank presented an obstacle to the absolute and un- 
limited control and disposal of the whole revenue of the country. So long 
as the public funds were deposited in the Bank of the United States and its 
branches, they could not be used for the purposes of political partisans, or 
for gambling in the public stocks. So long as the Bank could sustain the: 
credit of the commercial community, it would be impossible to break all the: 
traders upon borrowed capital, certainly hot the best part of the population,, 
probably, in the estimation of our Lycurgus, the worst. 

The reason, then, paramount to all others, for the removal, by the Secre-. 
tary of the Treasury, of the public deposites from the Bank of the United 
States, was the will of the President of the United States. It was a part 
of his system for simplifying the machine of Government. It was a part of 
his system for breaking all traders upon borrowed capital. It was a part of 
his system of ultimately reverting to a hard money currency, and prostrating 
every other interest in the community before the holders of lands and the | 
holders of slaves. The measure was admirably adapted to all these purposes. 
What possible contrivance could have been so well suited to simplify the ma- 
chine? It'placed the whole revenue of the Union at all times at his dispo- 
sal, for any purpose to which he might be disposed to apply it. In vain had 
the constitution of the United States solemnly enjoined that not a dollar of 
public money should ever issue from the Treasury unless in consequence of 
public appropriations made by Jaw. In vain had the laws cautiously station- 
ed the register, the comptroller, the treasurer, as checks upon the Secretary 
of the Treasury, so that the most trifling sum in the treasury should never 
be accessible to any one, or even any two men. Witha removal of the de- 
posites and a transfer draft, millions upon millions may be transferred by the 
_ Stroke of the pén of a supple and submissive Secretary of the Treasury, 
from place to place, at home or abroad, "wherever any purpose, personal or 
political, may thereby be promoted. All the perplexing complications of | 
Constitutional principle, all the jealous bolts and bars upon the gates of the 
Treasury, all the vigilant sentinels stationed before them to guard them from 


In NSOD, all vanish before this magic wand of the Secretary. At the ‘ Open 
Sesame” of a transfer draft, . | 


*. 


39 


‘©On a sudden open fly, 
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 
The brazen doors, and on their hinges grates 
Harsh thunder ;” 


surely nothing can be more simple! 

* To this same final object of simplifying the machine, two other maxims 
have been proclaimed as auxiliary fundamental principles of the present ad- 
ministration. First, that the contest for place and power in this country is a 
state of war, and. all the emoluments of office are the spoils of victory. The 
other, that it is the invariable practice of the President to reward his friends 
and punish his enemies. 

The selection of any bank as a place of deposite, is at once a loan with- 
out interest, and a grant of public money. It is a grant of all the profit 
which the Bank makes by the use of the money. The Secretary of the 
Treasury might himself be a stockholder in every bank which he has selected _ 
as a publie, depository as well asin one. What a simplification of the ma- 
chine of Government! What a glorious opportunity to reward friends and 
punish enemies! What a distribution of the spoils of victory! Establish 
the precedent, and the next step will be to make it a condition of selection 
that the Secretary of the Treasury shall be a stockholder in the Bank. It is 
very certain that none have been, or will be, selected anywhere, but such as 
are devoted friends to General Jackson. The officers of all such banks, their 
presidents, cashiers, directors, stockholders, debtors, and creditors are all linked 
together, by the depositary tie, as friends and supporters of General Jackson, 
and if any one of them should flinch for a moment from his fealty, 2 transfer 
draft shall forthwith punish him as an enemy, just as a transfer draft rewarded 
him as a friend. What an admirable simplification of the machine of Gov- 
ernment! What an unrivalled device for the benefit of the best part of the 
population! 

Mr. Speaker, in the review of the reasons which have been assigned, as 
well as of that which has been suppressed, for this unlawful and unjust remo- 
val of the public deposites from the Bank of the United States and its 
branches to institutions unknown to your laws, and unchecked by your con- 
trol, it has been my purpose to confine myself rigorously to the question be- 
fore you. If any thing that I have said on this, or a former day, bearing 
specially upon the conduct or character of the present Chief Magistrate, as 
implicated in these transactions, should have been offensive to his friends and 
supporters here, I shall regret the circumstance, and pray the House to be 
assured that I have said nothing but under the dictates of a commanding 
duty. With regard to any personal relations which may have existed here- 
tofore, or may now exist between him and me, I shall say nothing. They 
form a part of the history of the country, and to the judgment of posterity. I 
cheerfully, leave them. When, as a representative of the people, I entered 
upon this floor, it was with a firm determination to support his administration 
in every measure which my conscience could approve, and to rebuke him 
and his administration for every measure, if any such should occur, which I 
honestly believed derogatory to the honor or pernicious to the interests of 
my country. During the time that I have been engaged in this service, I have 
supported his administration at more than one of its times of trial. I sup- 
ported it in the tariff of 1832; I supported it im the revenue collection bill 
of the last session; supported it on both occasions against men whom I re- 
spect and esteem; supported it with an opposition and resistance to them 
from which J neyer would have receded. I hailed his proclamation as an 


40 


exposition of constitutional principles, in general sound and creditable, though 
I could neither conceal to myself, nor disguise to others, its utter and irre- 
concileable inconsistency with the annual message sent to Congress but six 
days before. Of that annual message it became my duty to expose, by a 
full analysis, the radical, fundamental, and most pernicious errors, of which 
we are now barely beginning to taste the bitter fruits. . 

In his rancorous and unrelenting hostility to the respectable and worthy 
President and Directors of the Bank of the United States I have never shared. 
It has appeared to me a passionate ebullition of anger and revenge, so- 
phisticated into a self-conceit of unbending patriotism. I voted for the bill 
to recharter the Bank, and deeply lamented, as I still deeply lament, the veto 
which rejected it. To that measure I look as the primary cause of all the 
miseries we are now enduring, and of the deeper and deepening woes that 
await our futurity. It is that veto which has been snatching from the mouth 
of labor its daily bread, and calling down upon itself the curses of the widow 
and the heart-rending cries of the orphan. And what have we seen as its 
consequences already? A President of the United States afraid of assassi- 
nation! A President of the United States barring his gates and bolting his 
doors against deputations of his suffering fellow-citizens, and turning a deaf 
ear to their complaints! The removal of the public deposites is but a natural 
sequel to the veto of the recharter. It was not enough to put the victim to 
death unless its dying hour could be made to agonize with torture. For all 
this, in the deep affliction of my soul, 1 say the President of the United 
States is personally responsible to this People. For every word that I have 
here said, or may say of him, I hold myself responsible to him, to my con- 
stituents, and my country. But I can have no controversy with any one, or 
more of his admirers in this House, and shall make no reply to their sallies 
of temper exercised upon me in retaliation for my animadversions in the dis- 
charge of my duty upon him. It would not become me to speak here in the 
fear of him. ‘They must not expect me to be silent for the fear of them. I 
believe them more honest than he believes them himself. If they are con- 
tented with that character which he gave of them to his confidential counsellor 
and Secretary, whom he dismissed for refusing to be the servile instrument 
of his will, I shall not disturb their self-satisfaction. In repelling with indig- 
nation, as a member of this and of the last Congress, his imputation of the 
rankest corruption upon the whole body of them both, I have not departed 
one hair’s breadth from the subject of deliberation now before the House. 
That imputed rank corruption he assigned to his confidential counsellor and 
Secretary, as his reason for insisting upon the removal of the public depo- 
sites before the meeting of the present Congress. It was like all the reasons 
assigned by the Secretary—unlawful and unjust. 

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I am well aware that I cannot expect to find 
wyself in the majority in this House upon any question relating to this sub- 
ject; but I would fain indulge the hope that the majority will take this ques- 
tion directly, without retreating from it, without flinching before it. Are the 
reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury, for changing the deposi- 
tory of the public funds, from places prescribed by law, to places selected at 
his will—are they, or are they not, sufficient to justify the measure?. With 
perfect respect for the majority of this House, to whom I now address myself, 
I say, is it not your duty to,your constituents (and I mean thereby the whole 
people of the Union) to answer that question ay or no? The corporation of » 
eae _ the United States, and of that body the United States themselves, 

olders, form a part, have formally complained of this act of the Se- 


¥ ¥ 


41 


crefitry as of a wrong done to them, and they have petitioned to you for re- 
dress. Permit me to say it will be no sufficient answer to this complaint, and 
petitionfor redress to tell them that the Bank shall not be rechartered. It will 
not be sufficient to say the Bank is unconstitutional. It will not be sufficient to 
call it a monster, a tyrant, a corrupt moneyed aristocracy; to aver that it has 
used its power to control the press, to influence elections, or to produce the 
present pressure. Still less will it be sufficient, after repeating from year to 
year to every pillar of this House, till the very echoes are ashamed to return 
the sound, that the Bank has committed all these crimes, to appoint a stroll- 
ing committee to perambulate this whole Union, from Portland to New 
Orleans, and from Philadelphia to St. Louis, to inquire and report to this 
House whether the Bank has committed them or not! The question to be 
answered is, has your Secretary of the Treasury wronged the Bank, or has 
he not? Has he taken their property and converted it to the use of others?— 
including himself. If you shrink from answering this question, it will be an 
argument of strong prevailment, to those who shall occupy these seats here- 
after, that you dared not meet it. The complaint of wrong and the petition 
for redress will survive you. ‘‘ The evil that men do lives after them.’’ The 
Bank of the United States will die; but its ghost will haunt this hall, though 
justice should be denied by Congress after Congress—perhaps from age to 
age—and your evasion of the question will be a standing recommendation of 
the claim, till importunity shall extort from your successors the reparation 
sought in vain from you. 

Nor is this the only duty incumbent upon you—upon you—upon the majority 
of this House. The fate of the people and of their posterity is in your 
hands. The experiment undertaken by the Chief Executive Magistrate is, in 
its nature, an assumption by him of legislative power; but it cannot be con- 
summated without your assent and co-operation. Most of you have been 
elected as members of this House under pledges to support his administra- 
tion. How many of you were aware that, in redemption of this pledge, you 
would be called to surrender to him your own peculiar and appropriate func- 
tions of legislation?—to pervert the forms, and invert the substance, of that 
division of powers without which, we have been taught from our childhood, 
that freedom is but the shadow of a shade. Your constitution has committed 
its legislative powers to Congress, and the executive power to the President 
of the United States. But, now, the President has constituted himself the 
legislator, and calls upon you to execute his ordinances and decrees; and 
you, in this House, are about to respond to his call, because you are pledged 
to support his administration. Representatives of the people of the North 
American Union, is it for this that you were elected the trustees of their 
interests? the guardians of their rights? Is there no way but by laying them 
at the feet of Andrew Jackson that you can support his administration? 
Nearly two centtries since, in the same unblessed year which restored the 
Stuarts to the throne of England, the representatives of the people of Den- - 
mark formally sugrendered into the hands of their King the whole power of 
the nation; and, since that time, the Government of Denmark has been a 
marvellously simple machine. Is that, in the annals of nations, the example 
which, of all others, you would be ambitious of imitating? Mr. Speaker, in 
the gloomy hours of anticipation, which the actual condition of our country 
has, for the last four months, forced upon me, I have sometimes cheered for 
a moment my thick-coming fancies, by imagining what, in the present crisis 
of our history, the representatives of the people of this Union might be, and 
what they ought to be. J have pictured to myself a House of Representa- 


42 


tives, in the short period of a two years’ existence, erecting to itself a Wau 
ment of imperishable renown; establishing for itself a reputation in after 
times of faithful co-operation with the other departments of the Government 
in promoting the welfare, and protecting the interests.of the people, their 
constituents, and, at the same time, of inflexible tenacity and unyielding 
adherence to the principles of the constitution, and the theory of human 
liberty, handed down to them from their fathers to be transmitted to their 
children. I have asked myself what that small but steadfast band of states- 
men and of heroes, whose forms salute us as we daily pass through yonder 
rotunda to and from this hall, in the very act of signing the Declaration of 
Independence; I have asked myself what would be their charge to us, their 
children and descendants, could they speak from the canvass as we pass them 
by; would ¢hey tell us that the summit of human glory is to be scaled by 
demolishing a Bank?’ That the benisons of mankind are to be bought by 
the closure of a broker’s shop? That half a dozen worthy and respectable 
traders of Philadelphia are tyrannizing over the nation in the guise of Bank 
directors; and that, unless we take from them the power of loaning money, 
and calling at the appointed time for its repayment, they will trample our 
laws, our constitutions, and our liberties, under their feet? Sir, could the 
patriots of 1776 come down from the side of the wall, enter in solemn pro- 
cession within these doors, take seats in front of your chair, and witness our 
deliberations, with what amazement would they learn the propositions sub- 
mitted to us, and listen to the resolutions prepared for our adoption? Startled, 
as they well might be, at the shrieks and groans of agonizing freedom which 
they would hear reverberating within and around this Capitol, would they 
not inquire, what Attila, what Alaric, what Gengis Khan, had poured his 
hordes of Goths, of Vandals, or of Tartars, over our fertile fields, our peace- 
ful plantations, and our late flourishing farms? What scourge of God had 
desolated our cities?’ What convulsion of nature had palsied the arm of 
industry? had furled the sails of commerce to mildew at your wharves? had 
silenced the mill-clap, the shuttle, and the loom? had banished the merchant 
from the exchange? had severed the ploughman from his plough? the mechanic 
from his implements of toil? and the daily laborer from his daily bread? 
Would they not inquire, what is of all this the cause? -And how would they 


* 


blush, or weep, to hear one half of this House respond to their inquiry, the - 
Bank! and the other half, the removal of the deposites! Sir, the pressure of | 


the removal of the deposites is nearly past; it has ruined its thousands, and 
afflicted its millions; but the simoom has blown over, and they who prostrated 
themselves on their faces before the blast survive unhurt, and may rise, and 
yet find their way out of the desert. | 
The pressure, from the removal of the deposites, is passing away. The 
prosperity of a great nation cannot long suffer from so trifling an incident as 
that. But the wrong is done, and its consequences will remain festering and 
Inflaming the body of the community until that wrong shall be repaired. 
Your President has usurped Legislative power; he has laid his hands upon 
your treasure, and he is now converting it to his own purposes. He has 
_ seized it, and now wields it as a weapon of power to himself, and an instru- 
ment of plunder to his partisans. Yet his experiment has but just commenced; 
its object is not merely to destroy, but to break the Bank. His chosen State 
banks are to be his depositories and engines, to restore a metallic currency. 
With what intuitive sagacity are the means adapted to the end! Sir, his 
aie banks would land the nation, they are already hurling it, into universal 
ankruptcy. His hand must be stayed, or the nation is undone! Mr. 


‘ 
% 4 


° 48 
Speaker, thanks to the guardian angel of our Union, there is, even now,, 
there is a power that stays his hand. His seizure of the public treasure will 
receive no sanction of law. His usurpation of Legislative power will remain 
a warning, and not an example, to his successors. Sir, is it to the represen- 
tatives of the people, or to the representatives of the States, that future ages . 
will look back for the fortitude that withstands usurpation, and for the energy © 
that redeems the violated form of freedom? Shall the verdict of the next, 
century pronounce that we have vindicated the rights of the people? that 
we have been true to our appropfiate trust? that we have shaken off the 
shackles of party spirit? that we have burst the bonds of idolized mortality? 
Or shall that crown of glory be reserved for our fellow servants in the 
northern wing of this Capitol?’ Mr. Speaker, there stands the Muse of His- 
~tory® prepared to record our votes. May they be such as we shall remember 
with consolation at the last hour of our lives! 


* The beautiful statue, in the wheel of whose car is the clock behind and over the 
Speaker’s chair, in the attitude of recording as the hands of the clock revolve. 


y 


REL 


Ah 


Wie 


